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XTbe IknicherDocher Xiterature 
Series 



Edited by Frank Lincoln Olmsted 



THE FIRST ISSUES ARE : 

I. — Episodes from the Winning of the West. 

By Theodore Roosevelt. 
II. — Abraham Lincoln. By Noah Brooks. 
III. — Astoria, and Adventures of Captain 

Bonneville. By Washington Irving. 
IV. — The Last of the Mohicans. By James 

Fenimore Cooper. 



G. P. PUTNAM'S SONS 

NEW YORK AND LONDON 



Ube Iknicherbocftcr 
Xiterature Series 

EDITED BY 

rrank Lincoln Olmsted 



EPISODES FROM 
"THE WINNING OF THE WEST 









Episodes from 

''The Winning of the 

West " 
1 769-1807 

By 

Theodore Roosevelt 

Author of "Hunting Trips of a Ranchman" 
"The Wilderness Hunter," etc. 
















•Sf 




G. P. Putnam's Sons 

New York and London 

V^t J^nicK«rbocher ^ress 

1900 




■^ 















7G28 1 

Library of CormnjiM 

NOV 16 19U0 

SECOND COPY 

Delivof'.tl to 

OROtH DIVISION 

r;0V 21 ii/uu 






Copyright, 1900 

BY 

THEODORE ROOSEVELT 



Ube ftnfclterbocfier press, flew ]9orli 



2^1 



" O strange New World that yit wast never young, 
Whose youth from thee by gripin' need was wrung, 
Brown foundlin' o' the woods, whose baby-bed 
Was prowled roun' by the lujuu's cracklin tread. 
And who grew'st strong thru shifts an' wants an' pains, 
_ — Nursed by stern men with empires in their brains, 
Who saw in vision their young Ishmel strain 
With each hard hand a vassal Ocean's mane ; 
Thou skilled by Freedom and by gret events 
To pitch new states ez Old World men pitch tents, 
Thou taught by fate to know Jehovah's plan, 
Thet man's devices can't unmake a man. 

Oh, my friends, thank your God, if you have one, that he 
'Twixt the Old World and you set the gulf of a sea. 
Be strong-backed, brown-handed, upright as your pines. 
By the scale of a hemisphere shape your designs," 

— LowEi.1.. 



EDITOR'S PREFACE 

THE chronological narrative of The Winning of the 
West is here given in all the vigor of the original 
language of the author. With this picturesque chron- 
icle are presented the more dramatic incidents in the 
western movement of our people — the great deeds of 
men in the conquest of the Wilderness, and the tale of 
how " the rifle-bearing freemen who founded their little 
republics on the western waters gradually solved the 
question of combining personal liberty with national 
union." 

The storm and stress of the Revolution obscured the 
steady advance of the backwoodsmen. The clash of 
battle quite outrang the crack of the solitary rifle and 
the tread of the Indians. But when the colonists along 
the sea at last won independence for the nation, the 
pioneers beyond the Alleghanies had already more than 
doubled the area of the land that was dedicated to 
" liberty and the pursuit of happiness," 

Of the individualism of those early days, of tbe slow 
drift toward Union, of the renewed strength that came 
with it, and of the acquisition of lyOuisiana, the narra- 
tive can speak for itself. The deeds of the frontiersmen 
belong to the history of the Nation and are a source of 
common national pride ; their names deserve the 
familiar use that follows deeds well done. 

F. L. O. 

Pine Lodge, Van Hisevii,i,e, N. J., 
July 5, 1900, 



PREFACE 

IT has been to me emphatically a labor of love to write 
of the great deeds of the border people. I am not 
blind to their manifold shortcomings, nor yet am I 
ignorant of their many strong and good qualities. For 
a number of years I spent most of my time on the fron- 
tier, and lived and worked like any other frontiersman. 
The wild country in which we dwelt and across which 
we wandered was in the Far West ; and there were, of 
course, many features in which the life of a cattleman 
on the Great Plains and among the Rockies differed 
from that led by a backwoodsman in the Alleghany 
forests a century before. Yet the points of resemblance 
were far more numerous and striking. We guarded 
our herds of branded cattle and shaggy horses, hunted 
bear, bison, elk, and deer, established civil government, 
and put down evil-doers, white and red, on the banks 
of the Little Missouri and among the wooded, precipi- 
tous foot-hills of the Bighorn, exactly as did the pioneers 
who a hundred years previously built their log cabins 
beside the Kentucky or in the valleys of the Great 
Smokies. The men who have shared in the fast-van- 
ishing frontier life of the present feel a peculiar sym- 
pathy with the already long- vanished frontier life of the 
past. 

Theodore Roosevelt, 
Sagamore Hii<i<, 
May, 1889. 



CONTENTS 

CHAPTER PAGE 

I.— The Indians of the Border . . . . i 

II.— The Backwoodsmen 8 

III. — Boone and the Long Hunters, 1769-1774 . 17 

IV. — Lord Dunmore's War, 1774 . . . .26 

V. — The BaTTi^e of the Great Kanawha ; and 

Logan's Speech, 1774 32 

VI. — Boone and the Settlement of Kentucky, 

1775 42 



VII.— The War in the Northwest, 1777-1778 

VIII. — Clark's Conquest of the Illinois, 1778 

IX.— Clark's Campaign against Vincennes, 1779 

X.— The Moravian Massacre, i 779-1 782 

XL — Kentucky until the End of the Revolu- 
tion, 1782-1783 94 

XII. — The Watauga Commonwealth, 1769-1774 . 104 

XIII. — King's Mountain, 1780 109 

XIV.— The Holston Settlements to the End of 

THE Revolution, i 781-1783 . . . .127 

XV. — Robertson Founds the Cumberland Set- 
tlement, 1 779-1 783 134 

XVI. — The Inrush of Settlers, i 784-1 787 . . 142 
ix 



Contents 



CHAPTER PAGE 

XVII.— The State oe Franklin, 1784-1788 . . 152 



XVIII. — Kentucky's Struggle for Statehood, 1784- 

1790 

XIX. — The Northwest Territory ; Ohio, 1787-1790 
XX.— St. Clair's Defeat, 1791 . 

XXI.— Mad Anthony Wayne ; and the Fight of 
the Fallen Timbers, i 792-1795 . 

XXII. — The Purchase of Louisiana, 1803 . 

XXIII. — The Explorers of the Far West, 1804-1807 



166 

177 
189 

207 
220 

227 



ILLUSTRATIONS 

PAGE 

Hunters and Trappers . . . Frontispiece 
From a drawing by R. F. Zogbaum. 

* Cumberland Gap, Looking Northwest toward 

Kentucky 44 

From a photograph by John Buchanan. 

Okee-Makee-Quid, a Chippeway Chief ... 50 
From a lithograph. 

* The R1F1.E, Tomahawk, Watch, Pocket Compass 

AND Sun Diai,, Hunting Knife, Powder Horn, 
PisToi., AND Sword of General George Rogers 
Clark, now Owned by Colonel R. T. Durrett, 
OF Louisville, Ky 66 

* Blue Licks Battlefield. Buffalo Trace Ascending 

FROM THE Licking River to the Battlefield . 98 
From a photograph by Colonel Bennett H. 
Young. 

The First Floating Mill on the Ohio . . . 102 
Redrawn from Hildreth's " Memoirs of the 
Pioneer Settlers of Ohio." 

* View of Abingdon, Virginia 132 

Redrawn from an old print. 

* Emigrant Boat in which the Pioneers Went from 

Pittsburgh to Kentucky 146 

From an old print. 

* Fort Washington, afterwards Cincinnati . . 212 

From an old print. 

Map of the West during the Revolution . At end 

* Reproduced by the courtesy of Colonel R. T. Durrett, Louisville, Ky. 



IMPORTANT EVENTS 

The Long Hunters, 1769-1771, 

Boone explores Kentucky ; Mansker hunts on the Cum- 
berland. 

1769 — The first settlers come to the Watauga. 

1771 — The insurrection of the " Regulators" drives many North 
Carolinians to the Watauga ; Robinson comes. 

The Watauga Commonweai,th, 1772-1778. 

1773 — Boone and his first band of settlers intercepted by In- 
dians. 

1774 — Floyd and others lay out large tracts on the Ohio. 
Disputes between Virginians and the Shawnees ; 
Lord Dunmore'S War : Cresap, Greathouse ; 
Battle of the Great Kanawha ; Logan's speech ; Peace. 

1775 — Henderson gets from the Cherokees the land between 
the Cumberland and the Kentucky rivers and names 
the colony " Transylvania " ; Boone then cuts the Wil- 
derness Road and leads the settlers. George Rogers 
Clark, Isaac Shelby, Simon Kenton come to Kentucky. 

The Cherokee War, 1776. 

Indians aroused by British and Tories attack the forts 

on the Watauga ; Georgia, South Carolina, and North 

Carolina retaliate severely. Kentucky is made a 

county of "Virginia. 
War in The Northwest, 1777-1778. 

Murder of Cornstalk. Hamilton incites the Algon- 

quins ; Border posts attacked. Clark sends spies to 

the Illinois country. 
1778 — Boone captured ; Indian forays ; Kenton's adventures ; 

Ci,ARK's Conquest of the Illinois : Kaskaskia, 

Vincennes ; Hamilton reoccupies Vincennes. 



xiv Important Events 

1779 — Clark's wonderful marcli, and his Recapture of Vinceti' 
nes. Robertson selects site for a new colony (Nash- 
ville). 

1780— The " Hard Winter" ; Bird's inroad, Martin's and Rud- 
dle's Station ; Kentucky divided into three counties, 
Jeflferson, Lincoln, Fayette. Ferguson's threat to the 
Holston (Watauga) men ; The Ride of the Mountain- 
eers, King's Mountain, October 7. 

1781 — Frontier scourged by Indian raids ; the Moravian In- 
dians forced to go to Sandusky ; their missionaries to 
Detroit. 

1782 — The Year of Blood : the Moravians massacred ; Craw- 
ford's expedition against Sandusky Indians defeated 
with great loss ; bloody attack on Estill's Station ; 
Bryan's and the Battle of the Blue Licks, August 19. 

PSACE WITH Great Britain, 1783. 

Influx of settlers ; "Stirrers-up of sedition " and sepa- 
ration become common in Kentucky ; Continental 
soldiers petition Congress to set off" their bounty lands 
in the Ohio country. 

Fruitless Negotiations with the Indians, 1784-1787. 

1784 — The "State of Franklin " organized (December) ; Sevier 
elected governor. 

1785 — The Spanish minister on arriving at Philadelphia engages 
in intrigues to separate Kentucky and Tennessee from 
the East. Congress provides for the systematic survey 
of the North-west. 

1786 — Connecticut is the last State to cede her western claims ; 
Ohio Company of Associates formed in Boston of 
Revolutionary officers. 

1787 — Robertson punishes the Cherokees ; Kentucke Gazette. 
Ordinance for the Government of the Territory North- 
west of the Ohio; slavery prohibited; General Harmar 
takes possession of the posts in the North-west. 

1788— The "State of Franklin " abandoned; Sevier's Indian 
war ; his arrest. General Rufus Putnam establishes 
Marietta on the Ohio ; General Arthur St. Clair is 
appointed Governor of the Northwest Territory. 



Important Events xv 

Indian War, 1790- 1794. 

1790 — Harmar leads his troops against the Miamis ; he is 

severely beaten ; the situation grows worse. 
1 791 — St. Clair's army nearly annihilated, November 4. 
1792 — Peace envoys murdered ; Anthony Wayne succeeds St. 

Clair. Kentucky becomes a State in the Union. 
1793 — Peace commissioners fail at Detroit; Wayne brings his 

army to Cincinnati, builds Greeneville, and fortifies 

Fort Recovery on the site of St. Clair's defeat. 
1794 — Indians assault Fort Recovery ; Wayne advances ; 
The Batti,e of the Fai,i<en Timbers, August 20 ; 

Treaty of Greeneville. 
1795— Jay's Treaty provides for the delivery of frontier posts. 
Treaty with Spain establishes the southern boundary 

and provides for free navigation of the Mississippi. 
1796 — Tennessee admitted as a State. 
1801 — Spain secretly cedes lyouisiana to France. 
1802— Ohio admitted as a State. 
1803— Louisiana Purchase. 
Lewis and Clark, 1804- 1806. 

Start from St. Louis ; winter at Mandan. 
1805 — Reach the Pacific and winter there. Burr starts on his 

first tour of the West. 
1805-6— Pike explores the head-waters of the Mississippi. 
1806 — Burr's second tour ; he surrenders his little flotilla near 

Natchez. Lewis and Clark return in safety (September). 
1806-7— Pike explores west to the Rockies, and southward into 

Mexico. 



EPISODES FROM 

THE WINNING OF THE WEST 



CHAPTER I 

THE INDIANS OP THE BORDER 

WHEN we declared ourselves an independent na- 
tion, there were on our borders three groups 
of Indian peoples. The northernmost were the Iro- 
quois or Six Nations, who dwelt in New York, and 
stretched down into Pennsylvania. They had been for 
two centuries the terror of every other Indian tribe east 
of the Mississippi, as well as of the whites ; but their 
strength had already departed. 

In the Southwest, between the Tennessee — then 
called the Cherokee — and the Gulf, the so-called Ap- 
palachians lived. These were divided into five lax 
confederacies : the Cherokees, Chickasaws, Choctaws, 
Creeks, and Seminoles. They were far more numerous 
than the northwestern Indians, were less nomadic, and 
in consequence had more definite possession of particu- 
lar localities ; so that their lands were more densely 
peopled. 

The Cherokees, some twelve thousand strong, were 



The Winnine of the West 



t. 



the mountaineers of their race. They dwelt among 
the blue-topped ridges and lofty peaks of the southern 
Alleghanies, in the wild and picturesque region where 
the present States of Tennessee, Alabama, Georgia, 
and the Carolinas join one another. 

To the west of the Cherokees, on the banks of the 
Mississippi, were the Chickasaws, the smallest of the 
southern nations, numbering at the outside but four 
thousand persons. South of these lived the Choctaws, 
the rudest and historically the least important of these 
Indians. 

The Creeks were the strongest of all. Their southern 
bands, living in Florida, were generally considered as 
a separate confederacy, under the name of Semiuoles. 
They numbered in all between twenty-five and thirty 
thousand, three fourths of them being the Creeks 
proper, and the remainder Seminoles. They dwelt 
south of the Cherokees, and east of the Choctaws, ad- 
joining the Georgians. The Creeks and Cherokees 
were thus by their position the barrier tribes of the 
South, who had to stand the brunt of our advance, and 
who acted as a buffer between us and the French and 
Spaniards of the Gulf and the lower Mississippi. 

The towns of the Cherokees stretched from the high 
upland region, where rise the loftiest mountains of 
eastern America, to the warm, level, low country, the 
land of the cypress and the long-leaved pine. Each 
village stood by itself, in some fertile river-bottom, with 
around it apple orchards and fields of maize. Like the 
other southern Indians, the Cherokees were more in- 
dustrious than their northern neighbors, lived by tillage 
and agriculture as much as by hunting, and kept 
horses, hogs, and poultry. 

The Cherokees were a bright, intelligent race, better 



The Indians of the Border 3 

fitted to " follow the white man's road " than any other 
Indians. Their confederacy was of the loosest kind. 
Every town acted just as it pleased, making war or 
peace with the other towns, or with whites, Choctaws, 
or Cherokees. In each there was a nominal head for 
peace and war, the high chief and the head warrior. 
But these chiefs had little control, and could not do 
much more than influence or advise their subjects ; 
they were dependent on the will of the majority. It 
was said that never, in the memory of the oldest in- 
habitant, had half the nation " taken the war talk " at 
the same time. As a consequence, war parties of Creeks 
were generally merely small bands of marauders, in 
search of scalps and plunder. 

Between the Ohio and the Great Lakes, directly north 
of the Appalachian confederacies, and separated from 
them by the unpeopled wilderness now forming the 
States of Tennessee and Kentucky, dwelt another set 
of Indian tribes. They were ruder in life and manners 
than their southern kinsmen, less advanced towards 
civilization, but also far more warlike ; they depended 
more on the chase and fishing, and much less on agri- 
culture ; they were savages, not merely barbarians ; 
they were fewer in numbers, and were scattered over a 
wider expanse of territory. 

Their relations with the Iroquois, who lay east of 
them, were generally hostile. They were also usually 
at odds with the southern Indians, but among them- 
selves they were frequently united in time of war into 
a sort of lax league, and were collectively designated 
as the northwestern Indians. All the tribes belonged 
to the great Algonquin family, with two exceptions, 
the Winnebagos and the Wyandots. The Wyandots 
or Hurons lived near Detroit and along the south shore 



4 The Winning of the West 

of Lake Erie, and were in battle our most redoubtable 
foes. They were close kin to the Iroquois, though 
bitter enemies to them, and they shared the desperate 
valor of these, their hostile kinsfolk, holding them- 
selves above the surrounding Algonquins, with whom, 
nevertheless, they lived in peace and friendship. 

The chief tribes of the Algonquins were well known 
and occupied tolerably definite locations. The Dela- 
wares dwelt farthest east, lying northwest of the upper 
Ohio, their lands adjoining those of the Senecas, the 
largest and most westernmost of the Six Nations. 
Westward of the Delawares lay the Shawnee villages, 
along the Scioto and on the Pickaway plains ; but it 
must be remembered that the Shawnees, Delawares, 
and Wyandots were closely united and their vil- 
lages were often mixed in together. Still farther to 
the west, the Miamis lived between the Miami and the 
Wabash, together with other associated tribes, the 
Piankeshaws and the Weas or Ouatinous. Farther 
still, around the French villages, dwelt those scattered 
survivors of the Illinois who had escaped the dire fate 
which befell their fellow-tribesmen because they mur- 
dered Pontiac. Northward of this scanty people lived 
the Sacs and Foxes, and around the upper Great Lakes 
the numerous and powerful Pottawattamies, Ottawas, 
and Chippewas ; fierce and treacherous warriors, who 
did not till the soil, and were hunters and fishers only, 
more savage even than the tribes that lay southeast of 
them. 

The Wyandots, and the Algonquins who surrounded 
them, dwelt in a region of sunless, tangled forests ; 
and all the wars we waged for the possession of the 
country between the Alleghanies and the Mississippi 
were carried on in the never-ending stretches of gloomy 



The Indians of the Border 5 

woodland. It was not an open forest. The under- 
brush grew dense and rank between the tall trees, 
making a cover so thick that it was in many places 
impenetrable, so thick that it nowhere gave a chance 
for human eye to see even as far as a bow could carry. 

This dense forest was to the Indians a home in which 
they had lived from childhood, and where they were as 
much at ease as a farmer on his own acres. To their 
keen eyes, trained for generations to more than a wild 
beast's watchfulness, the wilderness was an open book; 
nothing at rest or in motion escaped them. They had 
begun to track game as soon as they could walk ; a 
scrape on a tree trunk, a bruised leaf, a faint indenta- 
tion of the soil, which the eye of no white man could 
see, all told them a tale as plainly as if it had been 
shouted in their ears. 

Unlike the southern Indians, the villages of the 
northwestern tribes were usually far from the frontier. 
Tireless, and careless of all hardship, they came silently 
out of unknown forests, robbed and murdered, and then 
disappeared again into the fathomless depths of the 
woods. Half of the terror they caused was due to the 
extreme difficulty of following them, and the absolute 
impossibility of forecasting their attacks. Without 
warning, and unseen until the moment they dealt the 
death stroke, they emerged from their forest fastnesses, 
the horror they caused being heightened no less by 
the mystery that shrouded them than by the dreadful 
nature of their ravages. 

When hemmed in so that they had no hope of escape, 
the Indians fought to the death ; but when a way of 
retreat was open, they would not stand cutting like 
British, French, or American regulars, and so, though 
with a nearly equal force, would retire if they were 



6 The Winning of the West 

suflfering heavily, even if they were causing their foes 
to suffer still more. This was not due to lack of cour- 
age ; it was their system, for they were few in numbers, 
and they did not believe in losing their men. The 
Wyandots were exceptions to this rule, for with them 
it was a point of honor not to yield, and so they were 
of all the tribes the most dangerous in a pitched battle. 
Among the Indians of the Northwest, generally so 
much alike that we need pay little heed to tribal dis- 
tinctions, there was one body deserving especial and 
separate mention. Among the turbulent and jarring 
elements tossed into wild confusion by the shock of the 
contact between savages and the rude vanguard of 
civilization, surrounded and threatened by the painted 
warriors of the woods no less than by the lawless white 
riflemen who lived on the stump-dotted clearings, there 
dwelt a group of peaceful beings who were destined to 
suffer a dire fate in the most lamentable and pitiable of 
all the tragedies which were played out in the heart of 
this great wilderness. These were the Moravian Indi- 
ans. They were mostly Delawares, and had been con- 
verted by the indefatigable German missionaries, who 
taught the tranquil, Quaker-like creed of Count Zin- 
zendorf The zeal and success of the missionaries 
were attested by the marvellous change they had 
wrought in these converts ; for they had transformed 
them in one generation from a restless, idle, blood- 
thirsty people of hunters and fishers, into an orderly, 
thrifty, industrious folk, believing with all their hearts 
the Christian religion in the form in which their teach- 
ers both preached and practised it. At first the mis- 
sionaries, surrounded by their Indian converts, dwelt 
in Pennsylvania ; but, harried and oppressed by their 
white neighbors, the submissive and patient Moravians 



The Indians of the Border 7 

left their homes and their cherished belongings, and in 
1 77 1 moved out into the wilderness northwest of the 
Ohio. 

When the Moravians removed beyond the Ohio, they 
settled on the banks of the Muskingum, made clearings 
in the forest, and built themselves little towns, which 
they christened by such quaint names as Salem and 
Gnadenhiitten ; names that were pathetic symbols of 
the peace which the harmless and sadly submissive 
wanderers so vainly sought. Here, in the forest, they 
worked and toiled, surrounded their clean, neatly kept 
villages with orchards and grain-fields, bred horses and 
cattle, and tried to do wrong to no man ; all of each 
community meeting every day to worship and praise 
their Creator. 



CHAPTER II 

THE BACKWOODSMEN 

ALONG the western frontier of the colonies that 
were soon to be the United States, among the 
foothills of the Alleghanies, on the slopes of the wooded 
mountains, and in the long trough-like valleys that lay- 
between the ranges, dwelt a peculiar and characteris- 
tically American people. 

These frontier folk, the people of the up-country, or 
back-country, who lived near and among the forest-clad 
mountains, were known to themselves and to others as 
backwoodsmen. They all bore a strong likeness to one 
or another in their habits of thought and ways of living, 
and dijBfered markedly from the people of the older and 
more civilized communities to the eastward. The west- 
ern border of our country was then formed by the great 
barrier-chains of the Alleghanies, the trend of the val- 
leys being parallel to the sea-coast, and the mountains 
rising highest to the southward. It was diflScult to 
cross the ranges from east to west, but it was both easy 
and natural to follow the valleys between. 

The backwoodsmen were Americans by birth and 
parentage, and of mixed race; but the dominant strain 
in their blood was that of the Presbyterian Irish — the 
Scotch-Irish as they were often called. Full credit has 
been awarded the Roundhead and the Cavalier for their 
leadership in our history ; nor have we been altogether 

8 



The Backwoodsmen 9 

blind to the deeds of the Hollander and the Huguenot; 
but it is doubtful if we have wholly realized the im- 
portance of the part played by that stern and virile 
people, the Irish, whose preachers taught the creed of 
Knox and Calvin. These Irish representatives of the 
Covenanters were in the West almost what the Puritans 
were in the Northeast, and more than the Cavaliers 
were in the South. Mingled with the descendants of 
many other races, they formed the kernel of the dis- 
tinctively and intensely American stock who were the 
pioneers of our people in their march westward. 

The Presbyterian Irish were themselves already a 
mixed people. Though mainly descended from Scotch 
ancestors, many of them were of English, a few of 
French Huguenot extraction. They were the Protest- 
ants of the Protestants ; they detested and despised the 
Catholics, whom their ancestors had conquered, and 
regarded the Episcopalians by whom they themselves 
had been oppressed, with a more sullen, but scarcely 
less intense hatred. 

They did not begin to come to America in any num- 
bers till after the opening of the eighteenth century ; 
by 1730 they were fairly swarming across the ocean, 
for the most part in two streams, the larger going to 
the port of Philadelphia, the smaller to the port of 
Charleston. Pushing through the long settled low- 
lands of the seacoast, they at once made their abode at 
the foot of the mountains, and became the outposts of 
civilization. From Pennsylvania, whither the great 
majority had come, they drifted south along the foot- 
hills, and down the long valleys, till they met their 
brethren from Charleston who had pushed up into the 
Carolina back-country. In this land of hills, covered 
by unbroken forest, they took root and flourished, 



lo The Winning of the West 

stretching in a broad belt from north to south, a shield 
of sinewy men thrust in between the people of the sea- 
board and the red warriors of the wilderness. 

The two facts of most importance to remember in 
dealing with our pioneer history are, first, that the 
western portions of Virginia and the Carolinas were 
peopled by an entirely different stock from that which 
had long existed in the tide- water region of those colo- 
nies; and, secondly, that, except for those in the Caro- 
linas who came from Charleston, the immigrants of 
this stock were mostly from the North, from their great 
breeding-ground and nursery in western Pennsylvania. 

That these Irish Presbyterians were a bold and hardy 
race is proved by their at once pushing past the settled 
regions and plunging into the wilderness as the leaders 
of the white advance. They were the first and last set 
of immigrants to do this ; all others have merely fol- 
lowed in the wake of their predecessors. But, indeed, 
they were fitted to be Americans from the very start ; 
they were kinsfolk of the Covenanters; they deemed it 
a religious duty to interpret their own Bible, and held 
for a divine right the election of their own clergy. For 
generations their whole ecclesiastic and scholastic sys- 
tems had been fundamentally democratic. The creed 
of the backwoodsman who had a creed at all was Pres- 
byterianism ; for the Episcopacy of the tide-water 
lands obtained no foothold in the mountains, and the 
Methodists and Baptists had but j ust begun to appear 
in the West when the Revolution broke out. 

Backwoods society was simple, and the duties and 
rights of each member of the family were plain and 
clear. The man was the armed protector and provider, 
the bread-winner ; the woman was the housewife and 
child-bearer. They married young and their families 



The Backwoodsmen 1 1 

were large, for they were strong and healthy, and their 
success in life depended on their own stout arms and 
willing hearts. There was everywhere great equality 
of conditions. Land was plenty and all else scarce ; 
so courage, thrift, and industry were sure of their re- 
ward. All had small farms, with the few stock neces- 
sary to cultivate them ; the farms being generally 
placed in the hollows, the division lines between them, 
if they were close together, being the tops of the ridges. 
The buildings of each farm were usually at its lowest 
point, as if in the centre of an amphitheatre. 

Each backwoodsman was not only a small farmer but 
also a hunter ; for his wife and children depended for 
their meat upon the venison and bear's flesh procured 
by his rifle. His weapon was the long, small-bore, 
flint-lock rifle, clumsy, and ill-balanced, but exceed- 
ingly accurate. It was very heavy, and when upright, 
reached to the chin of a tall man ; for the barrel of 
thick, soft iron, was four feet in length, while the stock 
was short, and the butt scooped out. It was almost 
always fired from a rest, and rarely at long range. 

In the backwoods there was very little money ; bar- 
ter was the common form of exchange, and peltries 
were often used as a circulating medium, a beaver, 
otter, fisher, dressed buckskin or large bearskin being 
reckoned as equal to two foxes or wildcats, four coons, 
or eight minks. A young man inherited nothing from 
his father but his strong frame and eager heart ; but 
before him lay a whole continent wherein to pitch his 
farm, and he felt ready to marry as soon as he became 
of age, even though he had nothing but his clothes, his 
horses, his axe, and his rifle. If a girl was well off, 
and had been careful and industrious, she might her- 
self bring a dowry, of a cow and a calf, a brood mare, 



12 The Winning of the West 

a bed well stocked with blankets, and a chest contain- 
ing her clothes. 

The first lesson the backwoodsmen learnt was the 
necessity of self-help ; the next, that such a community- 
could only thrive if all joined in helping one another. 
IvOg-rollings, house-raisings, house-warmings, corn- 
shuckings, quiltings, and the like were occasions when 
all the neighbors came together to do what the family 
itself could hardly accomplish alone. Every such 
meeting was the occasion of a frolic and dance for the 
young people, whisky and rum being plentiful, and the 
host exerting his utmost power to spread the table with 
backwoods delicacies — bear-meat and venison, vege- 
tables from the " truck patch," where squashes, melons, 
beans, and the like were grown, wild fruits, bowls of 
milk, and apple pies, which were the acknowledged 
standard of luxury. 

The young men prided themselves on their bodily 
strength, and were always eager to contend against 
one another in athletic games, such as wrestling, rac- 
ing, jumping, and lifting flour-barrels ; and they also 
sought distinction in vying with one another at their 
work. Sometimes they strove against one another 
singly, sometimes they divided into parties, each bend- 
ing all its energies to be first in shucking a given 
heap of corn or cutting (with sickles) an allotted patch 
of wheat. Among the men the bravos or bullies often 
were dandies also in the backwoods fashions, wearing 
their hair long and delighting in the rude finery of 
hunting-shirts embroidered with porcupine quills; they 
were loud, boastful, and profane, given to coarsely 
bantering one another. Brutally savage fights were 
frequent ; the combatants, who were surrounded by 
rings of interested spectators, striking, kicking, biting. 



The Backwoodsmen 13 

and gouging. We first hear of the noted scout and 
Indian fighter, Simon Kenton, as leaving a rival for 
dead after one of these ferocious duels, and fleeing from 
his home in terror of the punishment that might follow 
the deed. Such fights were specially frequent when 
the backwoodsmen went into the little frontier towns 
to see horse races or fairs. 

A wedding was always a time of festival. If there 
was a church anywhere near, the bride rode thither on 
horseback behind her father, and after the service her 
pillion was shifted to the bridegroom's steed. If, as 
generally happened, there was no church, the groom 
and his friends, all armed, rode to the house of the 
bride's father, plenty of whisky being drunk, and the 
men racing recklessly along the narrow bridle-paths, 
for there were few roads or wheeled vehicles in the 
backwoods. At the bride's house the ceremony was 
performed, and then a huge dinner was eaten ; after 
which the fiddling and dancing began, and were con- 
tinued all the afternoon, and most of the night as well. 
A party of girls stole off the bride and put her to bed 
in the loft above; and a party of young men then per- 
formed the like service for the groom. The fun was 
hearty and coarse, and the toasts always included one 
to the young couple, with the wish that they might 
have many big children ; for as long as they could re- 
member the backwoodsmen had lived at war, while 
looking ahead they saw no chance of its ever stopping, 
and so each son was regarded as a future warrior, a 
help to the whole community. The neighbors all 
joined again in chopping and rolling the logs for the 
young couple's future house, then in raising the house 
itself, and finally in feasting and dancing at the house- 
warming. 



14 The Winning of the West 

Each family did everything that could be done for 
itself. The father and sons worked with axe, hoe, and 
sickle. Almost every house contained a loom, and 
almost every woman was a weaver. I^insey-woolsey, 
made from flax grown near the cabin, and of wool from 
the backs of the few sheep, was the warmest and most 
substantial cloth ; and when the flax crop failed and 
the flocks were destroyed by wolves, the children had 
but scanty covering to hide their nakedness. The man 
tanned the buckskin, the woman was tailor and shoe- 
maker, and made the deer-skin sifters to be used in- 
stead of bolting cloths. There were a few pewter 
spoons in use; but the table furniture consisted mainly 
of hand-made trenchers, platters, noggins, and bowls. 
The cradle was of peeled hickory bark. Ploughshares 
had to be imported, but harrows and sleds were made 
without difiiculty ; and the cooper work was well done. 
Each cabin had a hand-mill and a hominy block ; the 
last was borrowed from the Indians, and was only a 
large block of wood, with a hole burned in the top, 
as a mortar, where the pestle was worked. If there 
were any sugar maples accessible, they were tapped 
every year. 

But some articles, especially salt and iron, could not 
be produced in the backwoods. In order to get them 
each family collected during the year all the furs pos- 
sible, these being valuable and yet easily carried on 
pack-horses, the sole means of transport. Then, after 
seeding time, in the fall, the people of a neighborhood 
ordinarily joined in sending down a train of peltry- 
laden pack-horses to some large sea-coast or tidal-river 
trading town, where their burdens were bartered for 
the needed iron and salt. 

The life of the backwoodsmen was one long struggle. 



The Backwoodsmen 15 

The forest had to be felled, droughts, deep snows, 
freshets, cloudbursts, forest fires, and all the other 
dangers of a wilderness life faced. Swarms of deer- 
ilies, mosquitoes, and midges rendered life a torment in 
the weeks of hot weather. Rattlesnakes and copper- 
heads were very plentiful, and, the former especially, 
constant sources of danger and death. Wolves and 
bears were incessant and inveterate foes of the live 
stock, and the cougar or panther occasionally attacked 
man as well. 

These armed hunters, woodchoppers, and farmers 
were their own soldiers. They built and manned their 
own forts ; they did their own fighting under their 
own commanders. There were no regiments of regular 
troops along the frontier. In the event of an Indian 
inroad each borderer had to defend himself until there 
was time for them all to gather together to repel or 
avenge it. Every man was accustomed to the use of 
arms from his childhood ; when a boy was twelve years 
old he was given a rifle and made a fort-soldier, with a 
loophole where he was to stand if the station was at- 
tacked. The war was never-ending, for even the times 
of so-called peace were broken by forays and murders ; 
a man might grow from babyhood to middle age on 
the border, and yet never remember a year in which 
some one of his neighbors did not fall a victim to the 
Indians. 

Thus the backwoodsmen lived on the clearings they 
had hewed out of the everlasting forest ; a grim, stern 
people, strong and simple, powerful for good and evil, 
swayed by gusts of stormy passion, the love of freedom 
rooted in their very hearts' core. Their lives were 
harsh and narrow ; they gained their bread by their 
blood and sweat, in the unending struggle with the 



1 6 The Winnine of the West 



£> 



wild ruggedness of nature. They suffered terrible 
injuries at the hands of the red men, and on their foes 
they waged a terrible warfare in return. They were 
relentless, revengeful, suspicious, knowing neither ruth 
nor pity ; they were also upright, resolute, and fearless, 
loyal to their friends, and devoted to their country. 
In spite of their many failings, they were of all men 
the best fitted to conquer the wilderness and hold it 
against all comers. 



CHAPTER III 

BOONE AND the; I,0NG HUNTERS 
1769-1774 

THE American backwoodsmen had surged up, wave 
upon wave, till their mass trembled in the troughs 
of the Alleghanies, ready to flood the continent be- 
yond. The peoples threatened by them were dimly 
conscious of the danger which as yet only loomed in 
the distance. Spaniard and Creole Frenchman, Algon- 
quin and Appalachian, were all uneasy as they began 
to feel the first faint pressure of the American advance. 
As yet they had been shielded by the forest which 
lay over the land like an unrent mantle. All through 
the mountains, and far beyond, it stretched without a 
break ; but towards the mouth of the Kentucky and 
Cumberland rivers the landscape became varied with 
open groves of woodland, with flower-strewn glades 
and great barrens or prairies of long grass. This 
region, one of the fairest in the world, was the debat- 
able ground between the northern and the southern 
Indians. Neither dared dwell therein, but both used 
it as their hunting-grounds ; and it was traversed from 
end to end by the well marked war traces which they 
followed, when they invaded each other's territory. 
The whites, on trying to break through the barrier 
which hemmed them in from the western lands, 

17 



The Winninor of the West 



& 



naturally succeeded best when pressing along the line of 
least resistance ; and so their first great advance was 
made into this debatable land, the hunting-grounds of 
the Cherokee, Creek, and Chickasaw, and of the north- 
ern Algonquin and Wyandot. 

Unknown and unnamed hunters and Indian traders 
had from time to time pushed some little way into the 
wilderness. One explorer had found and named the 
Cumberland river and mountains, and the great pass 
called Cumberland Gap. Others had hunted in the 
great bend of the Cumberland and in the woodland 
region of Kentuck}^ famed amongst the Indians for 
the abundance of the game. But their accounts ex- 
cited no more than a passing interest ; they came and 
went without comment, as lonely stragglers had come 
and gone for nearly a century. The backwoods civili- 
zation crept slowly westward without being influenced 
in its movements by their explorations. 

Finally, however, among these hunters one arose 
whose wanderings were to bear fruit; who was destined 
to lead through the wilderness the first body of settlers 
that ever established a community in the far west, 
completely cut off from the seaboard colonies. This 
was Daniel Boone. He was born in Pennsylvania in 
1734, but when only a boy had been brought with the 
rest of his family to the banks of the Yadkin in North 
Carolina. Here he grew up, and as soon as he came 
of age he married, built a log hut, and made a clear- 
ing, whereon to farm like the rest of his backwoods 
neighbors. 

With Boone hunting and exploration were passions, 
and the lonely life of the wilderness, with its bold, wild 
freedom, the only existence for which he really cared. 
He was a tall, spare, sinewy man, with eyes like an 



Boone and the Long Hunters 19 

eagle's, and muscles that never tired ; the toil and 
hardship of his life made no impress on his iron frame, 
unhurt by intemperance of any kind, and he lived for 
eighty-six years, a backwoods hunter to the end of his 
days. His thoughtful, quiet, pleasant face was the 
face of a man who never blustered or bullied, who 
would neither inflict nor suffer any wrong, and who 
had a limitless fund of fortitude, endurance, and in- 
domitable resolution upon which to draw when fortune 
proved adverse. His self-command and patience, his 
daring, restless love of adventure, and, in time of dan- 
ger, his absolute trust in his own powers and resources, 
all combined to render him peculiarly fitted to follow 
the career of which he was so fond. 

Boone hunted in the edges of the wilderness, just 
over the mountains, at an early date. In the valley 
of Boone's Creek, a tributary of the Watauga, there is 
a beech tree still .standing, on which can be faintly 
traced an inscription setting forth that " D. Boone 
cilled a bar on (this) tree in the year 1760." 

His expeditions whetted his appetite for the un- 
known. He had heard of great hunting-grounds in 
the far interior, and on May i, 1769, he left his home 
on the Yadkin " to wander through the wilderness of 
America in quest of the countrj^ of Kentucky." Ac- 
companied by five men he struck out towards the 
northwest, through the tangled mass of rugged moun- 
tains and gloomy forests. After five weeks of severe 
toil the little band stood on the threshold of the beauti- 
ful blue-grass region of Kentucky ; a land of running 
waters, of groves and glades, of prairies, cane-brakes, 
and stretches of lofty forest, teeming with game. The 
shaggy-maned herds of unwieldy buffalo — the bison as 
they should be called — had beaten out broad trails 



20 The Winnine of the West 



t> 



along which they had travelled for countless genera- 
tions. The round-horned elk, with spreading, massive 
antlers, the lordliest of the deer tribe throughout the 
world, abounded, and like the buffalo travelled in 
bands not only through the woods but also across the 
reaches of waving grass land. The deer were extra- 
ordinarily numerous, and so were bears, while wolves 
and panthers were plentiful. 

In December, after six months of successful hunting, 
the party was attacked by Indians, and Boone and a 
companion were captured. When they escaped, they 
found their camp broken up, and their party gone 
home. By good luck, about this time, Boone was 
joined by his brother, Squire Boone, who had set out 
to find him and to explore this same region. Soon 
afterwards Daniel's companion in captivity was killed 
by the Indians, while Squire's companion was fright- 
ened back to the settlements by the sight of red men. 
The two brothers remained alone on their hunting- 
grounds throughout the winter, living in a little cabin. 
About the first of May Squire set off alone to the set- 
tlements to procure horses and ammunition ; while 
for three months Daniel Boone remained absolutely 
alone in the wilderness, without salt, sugar, or flour, 
and without the companionship of so much as a horse 
or a dog. But the solitude-loving hunter, dauntless 
and self-reliant, enjoyed to the full his wild, lonely 
life ; he passed his days hunting and exploring, wan- 
dering hither and thither over the country, while at 
night he lay off in the canebrakes or thickets, without 
a fire, so as not to attract the Indians. Of the latter 
he saw many signs, and they sometimes came to his 
camp, but his sleepless wariness enabled him to avoid 
capture. 



Boone and the Long Hunters 21 

Late in July his brother returned, and met him ac- 
cording to appointment at the old camp. Other hun- 
ters also now came into the Kentucky wilderness, and 
Boone joined a small party of them for a short time. 
Soon after this, however, the increasing danger from 
the Indians drove Boone back to the valley of the 
Cumberland River, and in the spring of 1771 he re- 
turned to his home on the Yadkin. 

In the summer of 1769, the same year that Boone 
started, a large band of hunters crossed the mountains 
to make a long hunt in the western wilderness with 
traps, rifles, and dogs, each bringing with him two or 
three horses. They made their way down the Cum- 
berland until they came to the great barrens of 
tall grass, where they made a permanent camp, and 
returned to it at intervals to deposit their skins and 
peltries. 

At the end of the year some of the adventurers re- 
turned home ; others went north into the Kentucky 
country, where they hunted for several months before 
recrossing the mountains ; while the remainder, led by 
an old hunter named Kasper Mansker, built two boats 
and hollowed out of logs two pirogues or dugouts — 
clumsier but tougher craft than the light birch-bark 
canoes — and started down the Cumberland. At the 
French Lick, where Nashville now stands, they saw 
enormous quantities of buffalo, elk, and other game, 
more than they had ever seen before in any one place. 
Some of their goods were taken by a party of Indians 
they met, but some French traders, whom they likewise 
encountered, treated them well and gave them salt, 
flour, tobacco, and taffia, the last being especially 
prized, as they had had no spirits for a year. They 
went down to Natchez, sold their furs, hides, oil, and 



22 The Winninof of the West 



& 



tallow, and some returned by sea, while others, includ- 
ing Mansker, came overland with a drove of horses 
through the Indian nations to Georgia. On account 
of the length of time that all these men, as well as 
Boone and his companions, were absent, they were 
called the Long Hunters, and the fame of their hunt- 
ing and exploring spread all along the border and 
greatly excited the young men. 

Soon after the return of Boone and the Long Hunt- 
ers, parties of surveyors came down the Ohio, mapping 
out its course and exploring the Kentucky lands that 
lay beside it. There were several surveyors also in a 
band that came into the wilderness in 1773, led by 
three young men named McAfee, — typical backwoods- 
men, hardy and adventurous. They descended the 
Ohio and explored part of Kentucky, visiting the dif- 
ferent licks. At one of these, famous because there 
were scattered about it the gigantic remains of the 
extinct mastodon, the McAfees made a tent by stretch- 
ing their blankets over the huge fossil ribs, using the 
disjointed vertebrae as stools on which to sit. At an- 
other the explorers met with what might have proved 
a serious adventure. One of the McAfees and a com- 
panion were passing round its outskirts, when some 
others of the party fired at a gang of buffalos, which 
stampeded directly towards the two. While his com- 
panion scampered up a leaning mulberry bush, McAfee, 
less agile, leaped behind a tree trunk, where he stood 
sideways till the buffalo passed, their horns scraping 
off the bark on either side ; then he looked round to see 
his friend " hanging in the mulberry bush like a 
coon." 

When the party started homewards across the Cum- 
berland Mountains, it suffered terribly while making 



Boone and the Long Hunters 23 

its way through the " desolate solitudes." At last, 
suu-scorched and rain-beaten, foot-sore and leg-weary, 
they came out in Powell's Valley, and followed the 
well-worn hunter's trail thence to their homes. 

In Powell's Valley they met the company which 
Daniel Boone was just leading across the mountains, 
with the hope of making a permanent settlement in far 
distant Kentucky. Boone had sold his farm on the 
Yadkin and all the goods he could not carry with him, 
and in September, 1773, he started for Kentucky with 
his wife and his children ; five families, and forty men 
besides, went with him, driving their horses and cattle. 
On approaching the defiles of the Cumberland Moun- 
tains the party was attacked by Indians. Six men, 
including Boone's eldest son, were slain, and the cattle 
scattered ; and though the backwoodsmen rallied and 
repulsed their assailants, yet they had suffered such 
loss and damage that they retreated and took up their 
abode temporarily on the Clinch River. 

In the following year numerous parties of surveyors 
visited the land. One of these — eight men in all — 
headed by John Floyd, started on April 9, 1774, down 
the Kanawha in a canoe. They first surveyed two 
thousand acres for " Colo. Washington," and laid out 
another tract for Patrick Henry. On the way they en- 
countered other parties of surveyors, and learned that 
an Indian war was threatened ; for a party of thirteen 
settlers on the upper Ohio had been attacked, but had 
repelled their assailants, and in consequence the Shaw- 
nees had declared for war, and threatened thereafter 
to kill the Virginians and rob the Pennsylvanians 
wherever they found them. The reason for this dis- 
crimination in favor of the citizens of the Quaker State 
was that the Virginians with whom the Indians came 



24 The Winning of the West 

chiefly in contact were settlers, whereas the Pennsyl- 
vanians were traders. 

At the mouth of the Kanawha the adventurers found 
twenty or thirty men gathered together. Some of them 
joined Floyd, and raised his party to eighteen men, who 
started down the Ohio in four canoes. When they 
reached the Kentucky, they split up. Floyd and his 
original party, after spending a week in the neighbor- 
hood, again embarked, and drifted down the Ohio. On 
May 26th they met two Delawares who had been sent 
down the river from Fort Pitt to gather their hunters 
and get them home, in view of the threatened hostilities 
between the Shawnees and Virginians. The news they 
brought was so alarming, that some of Floyd's com- 
panions became greatly alarmed, and wished to go 
straight on down the Mississippi; but Floyd swore that 
he would finish his work unless actually forced off. 
Three days afterwards they reached the Falls (now 
Louisville), where Floyd spent a fortnight, making 
surveys in every direction, and then started off to ex- 
plore the land between the Salt River and the 
Kentucky. 

Soon afterwards, Floyd and three companions left the 
others, agreeing to meet them on August ist, at a cabin 
on the south side of the Kentucky, a few miles from the 
mouth of the Elkhorn. After surveying for three weeks, 
they then went to the cabin, several days before the 
appointed time ; but to their surprise found everything 
scattered over the ground, while on a tree near the 
landing was written, " Alarmed by finding some people 
killed and we are gone down." 

This left the four adventurers in a bad plight, as they 
had but fifteen rounds of powder left, and none of them 
knew the way home. However there was no help for 



i 



Boone and the Long Hunters 25 

it, and they started off. At last they struck Cumber- 
land Gap, followed a blazed trail across it to Powell's 
Valley, and on August 9th came to the outlying settle- 
ments on Clinch River, where they found the settlers 
all in their wooden forts, because of the war with the 
Shawnees. 



CHAPTER IV 

LORD DUNMORE'S WAR, 1774 

ON the eve of the Revolution, in 1774, the frontiers- 
men had planted themselves firmly among the 
AUeghanies, and in the southwest and northwest alike, 
the area of settlement already touched the home lands 
of the tribes. But it was in the northwest that the 
danger of collision was most imminent ; for there the 
interests of the whites and Indians were, at the time, 
clashing more directly than ever. 

Virginia under her charter claimed westward and 
northwestward from the ocean an indefinite tract, 
limited only by her ability to explore and hold it. 
Similar grants to rival colonies led to endless con- 
fusion, bitter feeling, and nearly brought on an inter- 
colonial war. Particularly was this the case with the 
claim of Virginia to the valley of the Monongahela and 
all of extreme western Pennsylvania, where in 1774 
she proceeded boldly to exercise jurisdiction. 

For a time in the early part of 1774 there seemed 
quite as much likelihood of the Virginians being drawn 
into a fight with the Pennsylvanians as with the Shaw- 
nees. "While the Pennsylvanian commissioners were 
trying to come to an agreement concerning the boun- 
daries with Lord Dunmore, the royal governor of 
Virginia at the time, the representatives of the two 
contesting parties at Fort Pitt were on the verge of 

26 



Lord Dunmore's War, 1774 27 

actual collision. The earl's agent in the disputed 
territory was a Captain John Conolly, a man of violent 
temper and bad character. He formed the men favor- 
able to his side into a sort of militia, with which he not 
only menaced both hostile and friendly Indians, but 
the adherents of the Pennsjdvanian government as 
well. He destroyed their houses, killed their cattle 
and hogs, impressed their horses, and finally so angered 
them that they threatened to take refuge in the stockade 
at Fort Pitt, and defy him to open war. 

There were on the border at the moment three or 
four men whose names are so intimately bound up with 
the history of this war, that they deserve a brief men- 
tion. One was Michael Cresap, a Maryland frontiers- 
man of the regular pioneer type. The next was a man 
named Greathouse, of whom it is enough to know that, 
together with certain other men whose names have for 
the most part been forgotten, he did a deed such as 
could only be committed by inhuman and cowardly 
scoundrels. 

The other two actors in this tragedy were both In- 
dians, and were both men of much higher stamp. One 
was Cornstalk, the Shawnee chief, a great orator, a 
mighty warrior, a man who knew the value of his word 
and prized his honor, and who fronted death with quiet, 
disdainful heroism; and yet a fierce, cruel, and treacher- 
ous savage to those with whom he was at enmity. The 
other was L,ogan, an Iroquois warrior, who lived at that 
time away from the bulk of his people. He was a man 
of splendid appearance ; over six feet high, straight as 
a spear-shaft, with a countenance as open as it was 
brave and manly, until the wrongs he endured stamped 
on it an expression of gloomy ferocity. He had always 
been the friend of the white man, and had been noted 



The Winnine of the West 



t> 



particularly for his kindness and gentleness to children. 
One of the pioneer hunters has left on record the state- 
ment that he deemed " I<ogan the best specimen of 
humanity he ever met with, either white or red." 

Early in the spring of 1774, the outlying settlers be- 
gan again to suffer from the deeds of straggling Indians. 
Horses were stolen, one or two murders were committed, 
the inhabitants of the more lonely cabins fled to the 
forts, and the backwoodsmen began to threaten fierce 
vengeance. On April i6th, three traders in the employ 
of a man named Butler were attacked by some of the 
outlaw Cherokees, one killed, another wounded, and 
their goods plundered. Immediately after this Conolly 
issued an open letter, commanding the backwoodsmen 
to hold themselves in readiness to repel any attack by 
the Indians, as the Shawnees were hostile. Such a 
letter from Lord Dunmore's lieutenant amounted to a 
declaration of war, and there were sure to be plenty of 
backwoodsmen who would put a very liberal interpre- 
tation upon the order given them to repel an attack. 
Its effects were seen instantly. All the borderers pre- 
pared for war. Cresap was near Wheeling at the time, 
with a band of hunters and scouts. As soon as they re- 
ceived Conolly' s letter, they proceeded to declare war in 
the regular Indian style, calling a council, planting the 
war-post, and going through other savage ceremonies. 

Unfortunately the first stroke fell on friendly In- 
dians. The trader, Butler, spoken of above, in order 
to recover some of the peltries of which he had been 
robbed by the Cherokees, had sent a canoe with two 
friendly Shawnees towards the place of the massacre. 
On the 27th Cresap and his followers ambushed these 
men and killed and scalped them. Some of the better 
backwoodsmen strongly protested against this outrage ; 



Lord Dunmore's War, 1774 29 

but the mass of thein were excited and angered by the 
rumor of Indian hostilities, and the brutal and dis- 
orderl}^ side of frontier character was for the moment 
uppermost. They threatened to kill whoever interfered 
v/ith them, cursing the traders as being worse than the 
Indians; while Cresap boasted of the murder, and never 
said a word in condemnation of the still worse deeds 
that followed it. The next day he again led out his 
men and attacked another party of Shawnees, who had 
been trading near Pittsburg, killed one and wounded 
two others, one of the vdiites being also hurt. 

On the following day the whole band of whites pre- 
pared to attack Logan's camp at Yellow Creek, some 
fifty miles distant. After going some miles they began 
to feel ashamed of their mission ; calling a halt, they 
discussed the fact that the camp they were preparing 
to attack consisted exclusively of friendly Indians, and 
mainly of women and children ; and forthwith aban- 
doned their proposed trip and returned home. 

But Logan's people did not profit by Cresap's change 
of heart. On the last day of April a small part}' of 
men, women, and children, including almost all of 
Logan's kin, left his camp and crossed the river to visit 
Greathouse, as had been their custom ; for he made a 
trade of selling rum to the savages, though Cresap had 
notified him to stop. The whole party were plied with 
liquor, and became helplessly drunk, in which condition 
Greathouse and his associated criminals fell on and 
massacred them, nine in all. 

At once the frontier was in a blaze, and the Indians 
sent out runners to tell of the butchery and to summon 
the tribes for immediate and bloody vengeance. The 
Indians declared that they were not at war with Penn- 
sylvania, and the latter in return adopted an attitude 



30 The Winning of the West 

of neutrality, openly disclaiming any share in the wrong 
that had been done, and assuring the Indians that it 
rested solely on the shoulders of the Virginians. In- 
deed, the Shawnees protected the Pennsylvania traders 
from some hostile Mingos, while the Pennsylvania 
militia shielded a party of Shawnees from some of 
Conolly's men ; and the Virginians, irritated by what 
they considered an abandonment of the white cause, 
were bent on destroying the Pennsylvania fur trade 
with the Indians. 

Although the panic along the Pennsylvania frontier 
was intense, on the Virginian frontier it was more justi- 
fiable ; for dreadful ravages were committed, and the 
inhabitants were forced to gather together in their 
forted villages, and could no longer cultivate their 
farms, except by stealth. Instead of being cowed, 
however, the backwoodsmen clamored to be led against 
their foes, and made most urgent appeals for powder 
and lead, of which there was a great scarcity. 

IvOgan's rage had been terrible. The horrible treach- 
ery and brutality of the assault wherein his kinsfolk 
were slain made him mad for revenge, and he instantly 
fell on the settlements with a small band of warriors. 
On his first foray he took thirteen scalps, and am- 
bushed the party that followed him, slaying their 
leader. He repeated these forays at least three times. 
Yet, in spite of his fierce craving for revenge, he still 
showed many of the traits that had made him beloved 
of his white friends. Having taken a prisoner, he re- 
fused to allow him to be tortured, and saved his life at 
the risk of his own. A few days afterwards he sud- 
denly appeared to this prisoner with some gunpowder 
ink, and dictated to him a note. On his next expedi- 
tion this note, tied to a war-club, was left in the house 



Lord Dunmore's War, 1774 31 

of a settler whose entire family was murdered. It ran 
as follows: 

" Captain Cresap : 

" What did you kill my people on Yellow Creek for ? 
The white people killed my kin at Conestoga, a great 
while ago, and I thought nothing of that. But you 
killed my kin again on Yellow Creek, and took my 
cousin prisoner. Then I thought I must kill too ; and 
I have been three times to war since ; but the Indians 
are not angry, only myself. 

''July 21, 1774. Captain John I^ogan." 



CHAPTER V 

THK BATTI^E OP THE GREAT KANAWHA ; AND 
LOGAN'S SPEECH, 1774 



'^M 



KANWHILE Lord Dunmore, having garrisoned 
the frontier forts, three of which were put under 
the orders of Daniel Boone, was making ready a for- 
midable army with which to overwhelm the hostile 
Indians. It was to be raised, and to march, in two 
wings or divisions, each fifteen hundred strong, which 
were to join at the mouth of the Great Kanawha. One 
wing, the right or northernmost, was to be commanded 
by the earl in person ; while the other, composed ex- 
clusively of frontiersmen living among the mountains 
west and southwest of the Blue Ridge, was entrusted to 
General Andrew Lewis, a stalwart backwoods soldier. 

While the backwoods general was mustering his un- 
ruly and turbulent host of skilled riflemen, the English 
earl led his own levies, some fifteen hundred strong, to 
Fort Pitt. Here he changed his plans, and decided 
not to join the other division, as he had agreed to do ; 
but to entrench himself on the Scioto River, not far 
from the Indian town of Chillicothe. Thence he sent 
out detachments that destroyed certain of the hostile 
towns. 

But Lord Dunmore' s army was not destined to strike 
the decisive blow in the contest. The great Shawnee 
chief, Cornstalk, was as wary and able as he was brave. 

32 



I 



The Battle of the Great Kanawha 33 

He had from the first opposed the war with the whites; 
but as he had been unable to prevent it, he was now 
bent on bringing it to a successful issue. He was 
greatly outnumbered ; but he had at his command over 
a thousand warriors, the pick of the young men of the 
western tribes. Since his foes were divided, he deter- 
mined to strike first at the one who would least suspect 
a blow, but whose ruin, nevertheless, might involve 
that of the other. If Lewis' army could be surprised 
and overwhelmed, the fate of lyord Dunmore's would 
be merely a question of days. So without delay, Corn- 
stalk, crafty in council, mighty in battle, and swift to 
carry out what he had planned, led his long files of 
warriors to the banks of the Ohio. 

Lewis left the worst troops to garrison the small 
forts, and with his main force of eleven hundred men 
he dropped down the Kanawha, and on October 6th 
camped on Point Pleasant, the cape of land jutting out 
between the Ohio and the Kanawha. There was little 
order in the camp, and small attention was paid to 
picket and sentinel duty ; the army, like a body of 
Indian warriors, relied for safety mainly upon the 
sharp- sighted watchfulness of the individual members 
and the activity of the hunting parties. Before day- 
light on the loth small parties of hunters had, as usual, 
left camp to supplement with game an unsatisfactory 
allowance of beef. Two of these hunters, when some- 
what over a mile away, came upon a large party of 
Indians ; when one was killed, the survivor ran back 
at full speed to give the alarm, telling those in camp 
that he had seen five acres of ground covered with 
Indians as thick as they could stand. 

Instantly the drums beat to arms, and the back- 
woodsmen started from the ground, looked to their 



34 The Winning of the West 

flints and priming, and were ready on the moment. 
The general, thinking he had only a scouting party 
to deal with, ordered out two detachments, each with 
one hundred and fifty men, one to march up the bank 
of the Ohio, the other to keep some little distance in- 
land. They went about half a mile. Then, while it 
was still dusk, the men in camp, eagerly listening, 
heard the reports of three guns, immediately succeeded 
by a clash like a peal of thunder, as hundreds of rifles 
rang out together. It was evident that the attack was 
serious, and Colonel Field was at once despatched to 
the front with two hundred men. 

He came just in time. At the first fire both of the 
scouts in front of the white line had been killed. The 
attack fell first, and with especial fury, on the first 
division, commanded by Charles Lewis, who himself was 
mortally wounded at the very outset. His men, who 
were drawn up on the high ground skirting Crooked 
Run, began to waver, and then gave away. At this 
moment, however. Colonel Field came up and restored 
the battle, while the backwoodsmen who had been left 
in camp also hurried up to take part in the fight. Gen- 
eral Lewis at last, fully awake to the danger, hastened 
to fortify the camp by felling timber so as to form a 
breastwork running across the point from the Ohio to 
the Kanawha ; and through attending to it he was 
unable to take any personal part in the battle. 

Meanwhile the frontiersmen began to push back their 
foes, led by Colonel Field. The latter himself, how- 
ever, was soon slain ; he was at the time behind a great 
tree, and was shot by two Indians on his right, while 
he was trying to get a shot at another on his left, who 
was distracting his attention by mocking and jeering 
at him. The command then fell on Captain Evan 



The Battle of the Great Kanawha 35 

Shelby, who turned his company over to the charge of 
his son, Isaac. The troops fought on steadily, un- 
daunted by the fall of their leaders, while the Indians 
attacked with the utmost skill, caution, and bravery. 
The fight was a succession of single combats, each man 
sheltering himself behind a stump, or rock, or tree- 
trunk, the superiority of the backwoodsmen in the use 
of the rifle being offset by the superiority of their foes 
in the art of hiding and of shielding themselves from 
harm. The hostile lines, though about a mile and a 
quarter in length, were so close together, being never 
more than twenty yards apart, that many of the comba- 
tants grappled in hand-to-hand fighting. The clatter 
of the rifles was incessant, while above the din could 
be heard the cries and groans of the wounded, and the 
shouts of the combatants, as each encouraged his own 
side or jeered savagely at his adversaries. The cheers 
of the whites mingled with the appalling war-whoops 
and yells of their foes. The Indians also called out to the 
Americans in broken English, taunting them, and ask- 
ing them why their fifes were no longer whistling — for 
the fight was far too close to permit of any such music. 
Their headmen walked up and down behind their war- 
riors, exhorting them to go in close, to shoot straight, 
and to bear themselves well in the fight; while through- 
out the action the whites opposite Cornstalk could hear 
his deep, sonorous voice as he cheered on his braves, 
and bade them " be strong, be strong." 

About noon the Indians tried to get round the flank 
of the whites, into their camp ; but this movement was 
repulsed, and a party of the Americans followed up 
their advantage, and running along the banks of the 
Kanawha outflanked the enemy in turn. The Indians 
being pushed very hard now began to fall back, the 



36 The Winning of the West 

best fighters covering the retreat, while the wounded 
were being carried off. The whites were forced to pur- 
sue with the greatest caution ; for those of them who 
advanced heedlessly were certain to be ambushed and 
receive a smart check. Finally, about one o'clock, the 
Indians, in their retreat, reached a very strong posi- 
tion, where the underbrush was very close and there 
were many fallen logs and steep banks. Here they 
stood resolutely at bay, and the whites did not dare 
attack them in such a stronghold. So the action came 
almost to an end ; though skirmishing went on until 
about an hour before sunset. 

The Indians, having suffered too heavily to renew 
the attack, under cover of darkness slipped away, and 
made a most skilful retreat, carrying all their wounded 
in safety across the Ohio. The exhausted Americans 
returned to their camp with a number of scalps, forty 
guns, and many tomahawks. 

The battle had been bloody as well as stubborn. 
The whites, though the victors, had suffered more than 
their foes, losing some seventy-five men killed and one 
hundred and forty wounded, a fifth of their whole 
number. The Indians had not lost much more than 
half as many, about forty warriors being killed out- 
right ; and there was no chief of importance in that 
number. Whereas the Americans had seventeen 
ofl&cers killed or wounded, and lost in succession their 
second, third, and fourth in command. 

The battle of the Great Kanawha was an American 
victory, for it was fought solely by the backwoodsmen 
themselves. Their immense superiority over regular 
troops in such contests can be readily seen when their 
triumph on this occasion is compared with the defeats 
previously suffered by Braddock's grenadiers and 



The Battle of the Great Kanawha 37 

Grant's highlanders, at the hands of the same foes. It 
was a soldiers' battle, won by hard individual fighting ; 
there was no display of generalship, except on Corn- 
stalk's part. It was the most closely contested of any 
battle ever fought with the northwestern Indians ; and 
it was the only victory gained over a large body of 
them by a force but slightly superior in numbers. 
Both because of the character of the fight itself, and 
because of the results that flowed from it, it is worthy 
of being held in especial remembrance. 

Lewis, leaving his sick and wounded in camp, 
crossed the Ohio, and pushed on in obedience to the 
orders received from Dunmore on the day before the 
battle. When near the earl's encampment he was in- 
formed that a treaty of peace was being negotiated with 
the Indians. He with difficulty restrained his men, 
now eager for more bloodshed, and finally induced 
them to march homewards, the earl riding down to 
them and giving his orders in person. 

The spirit of the Indians had been broken by their 
defeat. Their stern old chief, Cornstalk, alone re- 
mained with unshaken heart, resolute to bid defiance 
to his foes and to fight the war out to the bitter end. 
But when the council of the headmen and war-chiefs 
was called it became evident that his tribesmen would 
not fight, and even his burning eloquence could not 
goad the warriors into again trying the hazard of battle. 
They listened unmoved and in sullen silence to the 
thrilling and impassioned words with which he urged 
them to march against the Long Knives, and, killing 
their women and children, themselves die fighting to 
the last man. Finally, when he saw he could not stir 
the hearts of his hearers, he announced that he himself 
would go and make peace. At that the warriors broke 



1/ 



38 The Winning of the West 

silence, and instantly sent runners to the earl's army 
to demand a truce. 

The crestfallen Indians assented to all the terms pro- 
posed: to give np all white prisoners and stolen horses, 
to surrender all claim to the lands south of the Ohio, 
and to give hostages as an earnest of good faith. But 
Cornstalk preserved through all the proceedings a bear- 
ing of proud defiance. He addressed the white leader 
in a tone rather that of a conqueror than of one of the 
conquered. Indeed, he himself was not conquered ; 
though he felt that his tribesmen were craven, still he 
knew that his own soul feared nothing. 

But Logan remained apart in the Mingo village, 
brooding over his wrongs and the vengeance he had 
taken. His fellows answered that he was like a mad 
dog, whose bristles were still up, but that they were 
gradually falling. When he was entreated to be pres- 
ent at the meeting, he responded that he was a warrior, 
not a councillor, and would not come. At last, after 
the Mingo camp had been destroyed, he sullenly acqui- 
esced in, or at least ceased openly to oppose, the peace. 

He would not come in person to Lord Dunmore ; but 
to John Gibson, who had long lived among the Indians 
and knew thoroughly both their speech and their man- 
ners, Logan was willing to talk. Taking him aside, he 
suddenly addressed him in the finest outburst of savage 
eloquence of which we have any authentic record. The 
messenger took it down in writing, and, returning to 
camp, gave it to Lord Dunmore, who then read it to 
theyWhole backwoods army. It ran as follows : 

/ 

' ' I appeal to any white man to say if ever he entered 
Logan's cabin hungry and he gave him not meat ; if 
ever he came cold and naked and he clothed him not ? 



The Battle of the Great Kanawha 39 

During the course of the last long and bloody war, 
Logan remained idle in his camp, an advocate for peace. 
Such was mj^ love for the whites that my countrymen 
pointed as I passed and said, ' L,ogan is the friend of 
the white man.' I had even thought to have lived 
with j-ou, but for the injuries of one man. Colonel 
Cresap, the last spring, in cold blood and unprovoked, 
murdered all the relations of Logan, not even sparing 
my women and children. There runs not a drop of my 
blood in the veins of anj' living creature. This called 
on me for revenge. I have sought it. I have killed 
many. I have fully glutted my vengeance. For ni}^ 
couutr}^ I rejoice at the beams of peace ; but do not 
harbor a thought that mine is the joj^ of fear. Logan 
never felt fear. He will not turn on his heel to save his 
life. Who is there to mourn for Logan ? Not one." 

The tall frontiersmen, rough Indian haters though 
they were, were so much impressed by the speech that 
in the evening it was the topic of conversation over 
their camp-fires. But they knew that Greathouse, not 
Cresap, had been the chief offender in the murder of 
Logan's family ; and when they rallied Cresap as 
being so great a man that the Indians put everN^thing 
on his shoulders, Cresap, much angered, swore that 
he had a good mind to tomahawk Greathouse for the 
murder. 

As it was evident from the speech that Logan did not 
intend to remain on the war-path, Lord Dunmore 
marched home with his hostages. Within six months 
he had brought the war to a successful end with results 
of immediate as well as far-reaching importance. It 
kept the Indians of the Northwest quiet for the first two 
years of the Revolutionary struggle, and meantime 



40 The Winning of the West 

wadered possible the s^tttenaoit of K<»itiicky aad the 
uumni^ of tt^ \V<st 

Oft tdke Imofe^racrd naicli the ofineis of the anny held 
at nokaJife liKjetiog to espiess thdr ^rautm syinpai^^ 
the Omtmental Connies Oorhidi "teas thf»i in sessioa) 
and ^(ith 1]t»r coontiymen in the sitnxg^ of whkli t^ 
sladcyv' miasloomins Qp ^th e^rar-iwseasang bteM:^^ 
Inaisexiesof leaolntnos they set iorth th^ de^t^itkin 
t» their Idi^^ to the honor of his canvma, and to the 
d^nity<iftheBritbhenqwre; bat they added that diis 
derotion vwiM only lasft^dule the king dagned to nile 
orer a firee people; that tiieir lonpe Ibr the Hhetty of 
Amecka ootw^^Kd all oOier considaatiottSk and that 
tbey ^raold exjert eresy powo- for its defence, not iiot« 
Qio^, hot mlien legolailj caDed Icxth by the xtMce ctf 
their conntrymea. They ended by tendering their 
t]ixDks to I/xd Donnnre, iilio was also ^rannly thanked 
%the\%^niaI^egi5iatnie;,asiK>dlasbytiieinHiUeis»- 
men of Fincastie County. 

Of tiie filftber kbbocyof the great chief OomsbJk 
it nay here be sud that some three years later be came 
into the ganison at Point neasmt (where tlie cxap 
was loctted at the time of tiie baffle of tbe (keat 
Kanawha) to explain that, while he was anskms to 
keep at peaces bis tribe were bent on going to war; 
and be fitankly added tbat of coarse if tbey did so 
siMwld have to join them. He and three other Indi 
ama^ them his son and tihe cbkf Redha^d:, were ( 
tuned as boSfciges. While they were thns confined in 
the fart, a mendier of a coaapany of rangers was killed 
by the Ind&uos near by ; wbereupo n his conm 
beaded by titesr captnn, m^ied in finioas ang^ into^ 
the fart to sby the boaaer^ Orrrsstelk beard tlseBi 
ami 



The Battle of the Great Kanawha 41 

countenance he exhorted his son not to fear, for it was 
the will of the Great Spirit that they should die there 
together ; then, as the murderers burst into the room, 
he quietly rose to meet them, and fell dead pierced by 
seven or eight bullets. His son and his comrades were 
likewise butchered. 



CHAPTER VI 

BOONE AND THE SETTLEMENT OP KENTUCKY, 1 775 

LORD DUNMORE'S war made possible the two- 
fold character of the Revolutionary war, wherein 
on the one hand the Americans won by conquest and 
colonization new lands for their children, and on the 
other wrought out their national independence of the 
British king. Had Cornstalk and his fellow-chiefs 
kept their hosts unbroken, they would undoubtedly 
have swept Kentucky clear of settlers in 1775, — as was 
done by the mere rumor of their hostility the preceding 
summer. Their defeat gave the opportunity for Boone 
to settle Kentucky, for Robertson to settle Middle Ten- 
nessee, and for Clark to conquer Illinois and the North- 
west ; it was the first in the chain of causes that gave 
us for our western frontier in 1783 the Mississippi and 
not the Alleghanies. 

A speculative North Carolinian, Henderson, had for 
some time been planning to establish a proprietary 
colony beyond the mountains, as a bold stroke to re- 
store his ruined fortunes ; and early in 1775, as the 
time seemed favorable, he proceeded to put his ventur- 
ous scheme into execution. For years he had been in 
close business relations with Boone ; and the latter had 
attempted to lead a band of actual settlers to Kentucky 
in 1773. 

42 



Settlement of Kentucky 43 

Henderson, and those with him in his scheme of land 
speculation, began to open negotiations with the Chero- 
kees as soon as the victory of the Great Kanawha 
(October 10, 1774) lessened the danger to be appre- 
hended from the northwestern Indians ; for he was 
anxious to get a good Indian title to his proposed new 
colon3^ When the Indian delegate appointed to 
examine Henderson's goods made a favorable report 
in January, 1775, the Overhill Cherokees were bidden 
to assemble at the Sycamore Shoals of the Watauga, 
where, on the 17th of March, Oconostota and two other 
chiefs signed the treaty in the presence and with the 
assent of some twelve hundred of their tribe ; for all 
who could had come to the treaty grounds. Henderson 
thus obtained a grant of all the lands lying along and 
between the Kentucky and the Cumberland rivers, 
paying for it 10,000 pounds of lawful English money, 
mainly in merchandise. It took a number of days be- 
fore the treaty was finally concluded ; no rum was 
allowed to be sold ; but herds of beeves were driven in, 
that the Indians might make a feast. 

As soon as it became evident that the Indians would 
consent to the treaty, Henderson sent Boone ahead 
with a company of thirty men to clear a trail from the 
Holston to the Kentucky — the first regular path opened 
into the wilderness, forever famous in Kentucky history 
as the Wilderness Road. 

After a fortnight's hard work the party had almost 
reached the banks of the Kentucky River, when, half 
an hour before daybreak, they were attacked by some 
Indians, who killed two of them and wounded a third ; 
the others stood their ground without suffering further 
loss or damage till it grew light, when the Indians 
silently drew off. Continuing his course, Boone 



44 The Winning of the West 

reached the Kentucky River, and on April ist began 
to build Boonsborough, on an open plain where there 
was a lick with two sulphur springs ; and he at once 
sent a special messenger to hurry forward the main 
body under Henderson, writing to the latter : 

" My advice to you, sir, is to come or send as soon as 
possible. Your company is desired greatly, for the 
people are very uneasy, but are willing to stay and 
venture their lives with you, and now is the time to 
flusterate the intentions of the Indians, and keep the 
country whilst we are in it. If we give way to them 
now, it will ever be the case." 

Henderson, having started as soon as he finished 
the treaty, was obliged to halt and leave his wagons in 
Powell's Valley, for beyond that even so skilful a road- 
maker as Boone had not been able to find or make a 
way passable for wheels. Accordingly, their goods 
and implements were placed on pack-horses, and the 
company started again. 

The journey was hard and tiresome. At times it 
rained ; and again there were heavy snow-storms. 
The mountains were very steep, and it was painfully 
laborious work to climb them while chopping out a way 
for the pack-train. At night a watch had to be kept 
for Indians. It was only here and there that the beasts 
got good grazing. Sometimes the horses had their 
saddles turned while struggling through the woods. 
But the great difi&culty came in crossing the creeks, 
where the banks were rotten, the bottom bad, or the 
water deep ; then the horses would get mired down and 
wet their packs, or they would have to be swum across 
while their loads were ferried over on logs. One day, 




< s 



Settlement of Kentucky 45 

in going along a creek, they had to cross it no less than 
fifty times, by " very bad foards." 

On the 7th of April they met Boone's runner, bearing 
tidings of the loss occasioned by the Indians, and also 
found parties of would-be settlers, who, panic-stricken 
by the sudden forays, were fleeing from the country. 
Henderson's party kept on with good courage, and per- 
suaded quite a number of the fugitives to turn back 
with them. Some of these men, however, were not 
leaving the country because of fright, for many, among 
them the McAfees, had not brought out their families, 
but had simply come to clear the ground, build cabins, 
plant corn, and turn some branded cattle loose in the 
woods ; and, returning to the settlements, they were 
planning to bring out their wives and children the 
following 3^ear. 

Henderson's company came into the beautiful Ken- 
tucky country in mid-April, when it looked its best, and 
reached the fort that Boone was building on the 20th 
of the month, being welcomed to its wooden walls by a 
rifle volley. They at once set to with a will to finish it. 
It was a typical forted village, such as the frontiersmen 
built everywhere in the West and Southwest during the 
years that they were pushing their way across the con- 
tinent in the teeth of fierce and harassing warfare. It 
was in shape a parallelogram, some two hundred and 
fifty feet long and half as wide. At each corner was a 
two-storied loopholed block-house to act as a bastion. 
The stout log cabins were arranged in straight lines, 
so that their outer sides formed part of the wall, the 
spaces between them being filled with a high stockade, 
made of heavy squared timbers thrust upright into the 
ground, and bound together within by a horizontal 
stringer near the top. They were loopholed like the 



4-6 The Winning of the West 

block-houses. The heavy wooden gates, closed with 
stout bars, were flanked without by the block-houses 
and within by small windows cut in the nearest cabins. 
The houses had sharp, sloping roofs, made of huge 
clapboards, and these great wooden slabs were kept in 
place by long poles, bound with withes to the rafters. 
When danger threatened, the cattle were kept in the 
open space in the middle. 

Three other similar forts or stations were built about 
the same time as Boonsborough, namely : Harrods- 
town, Boiling Springs, and St. Asaphs, better known 
as Logan's Station, from its founder's name. These 
all lay to the southwest, some thirty odd miles from 
Boonsborough. Every such fort or station served as 
the rally ing-place for the country round about, the 
stronghold in which the people dwelt during time of 
danger ; and later on, when all danger had long ceased, 
it often grew into the chief town of the district. This 
system enabled the inhabitants to combine for defence, 
and yet to take up the large tracts of four to fourteen 
hundred acres, to which they were by law entitled. 
Thus the settlers were scattered over large areas, and, 
as elsewhere in the Southwest, the county and not the 
town became the governmental unit. 

Henderson, having established a land agency at 
Boonsborough, at once proceeded to deed to the colo- 
nists many hundred thousand acres, the surveying of 
which fell largely to Boone, whose initials became fa- 
miliar landmarks in the colony. With equal celerit)^ 
he caused delegates to be elected to the legislature of 
Transylvania, as he had early named the colony, and 
began immediately to organize a government for it. 
The delegates, seventeen in all, met at Boonsborough, 
on a level plain of white clover, under an old elm, a fit 



Settlement of Kentucky 47 

council-house for this pioneer legislature of game hunt- 
ers and Indian fighters. 

These weather-beaten backwoods warriors, men of 
genuine force of character, behaved with a dignity and 
wisdom that would have well become any legislative 
body. After listening to a speech from Henderson in 
which he outlined the needs of the new country, they 
provided for courts, for the militia, for punishing 
criminals, fixing sheriffs' and clerks' fees, and for 
issuing writs of attachment. Boone proposed a scheme 
for game protection, which the legislature immediately 
adopted, and likewise an " act for preserving the breed 
of horses," — for, from the very outset, the Kentuckians 
showed the love for fine horses and for horse-racing 
which has ever since distinguished them. And it was 
likewise stipulated that there should be complete re- 
ligious freedom and toleration for all sects. 

Transylvania, however, was between two millstones. 
The settlers revolted against its authority, and ap- 
pealed to Virginia ; for it was hopeless to expect that 
the bold men who conquered the wilderness would be 
content to hold it, even at a small quit-rent, from Hen- 
derson. Lord Dunmore denounced Henderson and his 
acts ; and it was in vain that Transylvania appealed to 
the Continental Congress, asking leave to send a dele- 
gate thereto, and asserting its devotion to the American 
cause ; for Jefferson and Patrick Henry were members 
of that body, and though they agreed with Lord Dun- 
more in nothing else, were quite as determined as he 
that Kentucky should remain part of Virginia. So 
Transylvania's fitful life flickered out of existence; the 
Virginia Legislature in 1778 solemnly annulling the 
title of the company, but very properly recompensing 
the originators by the gift of two hundred thousand 



48 The Winning of the West 

acres. North Carolina pursued a similar course ; and 
Henderson, after the collapse of his colony, drifts out 
of history. 

Soon after the fort at Boonsborough was built, Boone 
went back to North Carolina for his family, and in the 
fall returned, bringing out a band of new settlers, A 
few roving hunters and daring pioneer settlers also 
came to his fort in the fall ; among them, the famous 
scout, Simon Kenton, and John Todd, a man of high 
and noble character and well-trained mind, who after- 
wards fell by Boone's side when in command at the 
fatal battle of Blue L,icks. In this year also Clark and 
Shelby first came to Kentucky. 

All this time there penetrated through the sombre 
forests faint echoes of the strife the men of the sea- 
coast had just begun against the British king. The 
rumors woke to passionate loyalty the hearts of the 
pioneers ; and a roaming party of hunters, when 
camped on a branch of the Elkhorn, called the spot 
Lexington, in honor of the Massachusetts minute-men, 
about whose death and victory they had just heard. 

By the end of 1775 the Americans had gained firm 
foothold in Kentucky. 



CHAPTER VII 

THE WAR IN THE NORTHWEST, 

1777-1778 

IN the fall of 1776 at Detroit great councils were held 
by all the northwestern tribes, to whom the Six 
Nations sent the white belt of peace, that they might 
cease their feuds and join against the Americans. The 
later councils were summoned by Henry Hamilton, the 
British lieutenant-governor of the northwestern region, 
whose headquarters were at Detroit. He was an am- 
bitious, energetic, unscrupulous man, of bold character, 
who wielded great influence over the Indians ; and the 
conduct of the war in the West, as well as the entire 
management of frontier affairs, was entrusted to him 
by the British Government. He had been ordered to 
enlist the Indians on the British side, and have them 
ready to act against the Americans in the spring ; and 
accordingly he gathered the tribes together. He him- 
self took part in the war-talks, plying the Indians with 
presents and fire-water no less than with speeches and 
promises. The headmen of the different tribes, as they 
grew excited, passed one another black, red, or bloody, 
tomahawk belts, as tokens of the vengeance to be 
taken on their white foes. One Delaware chief still 
held out for neutrality, announcing that if he had to 
side with either set of combatants, it would be with the 
" buckskins," or backwoodsmen, and not with the red- 
coats ; but the bulk of the warriors sympathized with 

49 



50 The Winning of the West 

the Half King of the Wyaudots when he said that the 
Ivong Knives had for years interfered with the Indians' 
hunting, and that now at last it was the Indians' turn 
to threaten revenge. 

Hamilton was for the next two years the mainspring 
of Indian hostility to the Americans in the Northwest ; 
and he rapidly acquired the venomous hatred of the 
backwoodsmen, who nicknamed him the " hair-buyer," 
asserting that he put a price on the scalps of Americans. 
Hamilton himself had been ordered by his immediate 
oflScial superior to assail the borders of Pennsylvania 
and Virginia with his savages, to destroy the crops and 
buildings of the settlers who had advanced beyond the 
mountains, and to give to his Indian allies — the 
Hurons, Shawnees, and other tribes — all the land of 
which they thus took possession. With such allies as 
Hamilton had, this order was tantamount to proclaim- 
ing a war of extermination, waged with appalling and 
horrible cruelty against the settlers. 

All through the winter of '76-' 77 the northwestern 
Indians were preparing to take up the tomahawk. 
Runners were sent through the leafless, frozen woods 
from one to another of their winter camps. In each 
bleak, frail village, each snow-hidden cluster of bark 
wigwams, the painted, half-naked warriors danced the 
war-dance, and sang the war-song, beating the ground 
with their war-clubs and keeping time with their feet 
to the rhythmic chant as they moved in rings round 
the peeled post, into which they struck their hatchets. 
The hereditary sachems, the peace chiefs, could no 
longer control the young men. The braves made ready 
their weapons and battle gear ; their bodies were 
painted red and black, the plumes of the war eagle 
were braided into their long scalp-locks, and some put 




OKEE-MAKEE-QUID, A CHIPPEWAY CHIEF. 
From a lithograph. 



The War in the Northwest 51 

on necklaces of bears' claws, and head-dresses made of 
panther skin, or of the shaggy and horned frontlet of 
the bnffalo. Before the snow was off the ground the 
war parties crossed the Ohio and fell on the frontiers 
from the Monongahela and Kanawha to the Kentucky. 

Among others in the spring of 1777, the stockade at 
Wheeling was attacked by two or three hundred In- 
dians ; with them came a party of Rangers, recruited 
by Hamilton from the French, British, and Tories at 
Detroit. Most of the men from inside the fort were 
drawn into an ambuscade and were slain ; but the re- 
mainder made good the defence, helped by the women, 
who ran the lead into bullets, cooled and loaded the 
guns, and even, when the rush was made, assisted to 
repel it by firing through the loopholes. After making 
a determined effort to storm the stockade, in which 
some of the boldest warriors were slain while trying in 
vain to batter down the gates with heavy timbers, the 
baffled Indians were obliged to retire discomfited. The 
siege is chiefly memorable because of an incident con- 
nected with a leading man of the neighborhood, a 
Major McColloch. 

When Wheeling was invested, McColloch tried to 
break into it, riding a favorite old white horse. But 
the Indians intercepted him, and hemmed him in on 
the brink of an almost perpendicular slope, some three 
hundred feet high. McColloch had no thought of sur- 
rendering, to die by fire at the stake ; so, wheeling 
short round, he spurred his steed over the brink. The 
old horse never faltered, but plunged headlong down 
the steep, boulder covered slope. Good luck, aided by 
the wonderful skill of the rider and the marvellous 
strength and sure-footedness of his steed, rewarded one 
of the most daring feats of horsemanship of which we 



52 The Winning of the West 

have any authentic record. There was a crash, the 
shock of a heavy body, half springing, half falling, a 
scramble among loose rocks, and the snapping of sap- 
lings and bushes ; and in another moment the awe- 
struck Indians above saw their unharmed foe galloping 
his gallant white horse in safety across the plain. To 
this day the place is known by the name of McColloch's 
Leap. 

Likewise, Boonsborough, which was held by twenty- 
two riflemen, was attacked twice, once in April and 
again in July. The first time the garrison was taken 
by surprise ; the wounded included Boone himself. 
The Indians promptly withdrew when they found they 
could not carry the fort by a sudden assault. On the 
second occasion the whites were on their guard, and, 
though there were but thirteen unhurt men in the fort, 
they easily beat off the assailants, and slew half a dozen 
of them. This time the Indians stayed round two days, 
keeping up a heavy fire, under cover of which they 
several times tried to burn the fort. 

Early in 1778 a severe calamity befell the settlements. 
In January Boone went, with twenty-nine other men, 
to the Blue Licks to make salt for the different garri- 
sons — for hitherto this necessary of life had been 
brought in, at great trouble and expense, from the 
settlements. The following month, having sent back 
three men with loads of salt, he and all the others were 
surprised and captured by a party of eighty or ninety 
Miamis, led by two Frenchmen. When surrounded, 
so that there was no hope of escape, Boone agreed that 
all should surrender on condition of being well treated. 
The Indians on this occasion loyally kept faith. The 
two Frenchmen were anxious to improve their capture 
by attacking Boonsborough ; but the savages were 



The War in the Northwest 53 

satisfied with their success, and insisted on returning to 
their villages. Boone was taken first to Chillicothe, 
the chief Shawnee town on the Little Miami, and then 
to Detroit, where Hamilton and the other Englishmen 
treated him well, and tried to ransom him for a hundred 
pounds sterling. However, the Indians had become 
very much attached to him, and refused the ransom, 
taking their prisoner back to Chillicothe. Here he 
was adopted into the tribe, and remained for two 
months, winning the good will of the Shawnees by his 
cheerfulness and his skill as a hunter, being careful not 
to rouse their jealousy by any too great display of skill 
at the shooting-matches. 

Hamilton kept urging the Indians to repeat their 
ravages of the preceding year, so they determined 
forthwith to fall on the frontier in force. By their war 
parties, and the accompanying bands of Tories, Hamil- 
ton sent placards to be distributed among the frontiers- 
men, endeavoring both by threat and by promise of 
reward to make them desert the patriot cause. 

In June a large war party gathered at Chillicothe to 
march against Boonsborough, and Boone determined 
to escape at all hazards, so that he might warn his 
friends. One morning before sunrise he eluded the 
vigilance of his Indian companions and started through 
the woods for his home, where he arrived in four days, 
having had but one meal during the whole journey of a 
hundred and sixty miles. 

On reaching Boonsborough he at once set about put- 
ting the fort in good condition. His escape had prob- 
ably disconcerted the Indian war party, for no imme- 
diate attack was made on the fort. After waiting until 
August he got tired of inaction, and made a foray 
into the Indian country himself with nineteen men, 



54 The Winning of the West 

defeating a small party of his foes on the Sciota. At the 
same time he learned that the main body of the Miamis 
had at last marched against Boonsborough. Instantly 
he retraced his steps with all possible speed, passed by 
the Indians, and reached the threatened fort a day be- 
fore they did. 

On the eighth day of the month the savages appeared 
before the stockade. They were between three and 
four hundred in number, Shawnees and Miamis, and 
were led by Captain Daigniau de Quindre, a noted 
Detroit partisan ; with him were eleven other French- 
men, besides the Indian chiefs. They marched into 
view with British and French colors flying, and for- 
mally summoned the little wooden fort to surrender in 
the name of his Britannic Majesty. Boone first got a 
respite of two days to consider De Quindre's request, 
and occupied the time in getting the horses and cattle 
into the fort. At the end of the two days the French- 
man came in person to the walls to hear the answer 
to his proposition ; whereupon Boone, thanking him 
in the name of the defenders for having given them 
time to prepare for defence, told him that now they 
laughed at his attack. De Quindre, mortified at being 
outwitted, set a trap in his turn for Boone. He assured 
the latter that his orders from Detroit were to capture, 
not to destroy, the garrison, and proposed that nine of 
their number should come out and hold a treaty. The 
terms of the treaty are not mentioned ; apparently it 
was to be one of neutrality, Boonsborough acting on its 
own account, and De Quindre agreeing to march his 
forces peaceably off when it was concluded. 

Boone accepted the proposition, but insisted upon the 
conference being held within sixty yards of the fort. 
After the treaty was concluded, the Indians proposed 



i 



The War in the Northwest 55 

to shake hands with the nine treaty-makers, and 
promptly grappled them ; but the borderers wrested 
themselves free and fled to the fort under a heavy fire. 

The Indians then attacked the fort, surrounding it 
on every side and keeping up a constant fire. The 
whites replied in kind, but the combatants were so well 
covered that little damage was done. At night the In- 
dians pitched torches of cane and hickory bark against 
the stockade, in the vain effort to set it on fire, and De 
Quindre tried to undermine the walls, starting from 
the water-mark. But Boone discovered the attempt 
and sunk a trench as a countermine. Then De Quindre 
gave up and retreated on August 20th, after nine days' 
fighting, in which the whites had but two killed and 
four wounded ; nor was the loss of the Indians much 
heavier. This was the last siege of Boonsborough. 

The savages continued to annoy the border through- 
out the year 1778. The extent of their ravages can be 
seen from the fact that during the summer months 
those around Detroit alone brought in to Hamilton 
eighty-one scalps and thirty-four prisoners, seventeen 
of whom they surrendered to the British, keeping the 
others either to make them slaves or else to put them 
to death with torture. 

Boone, on the other hand, roamed restlessly over the 
country, spying out and harrying the Indian war par- 
ties, and making it his business to meet the incoming 
bands of settlers and to protect and guide them on the 
way to their intended homes. When not on other duty, 
he hunted steadily, and met with many adventures, 
still handed down by tradition. 

One band of painted marauders carried off Boone's 
daughter. She was in a canoe with two other girls on 
the river near Boonsborough when they were pounced 



56 The Winning of the West 

on by five Indians. The two younger girls gave way 
to despair when captured ; but Betsey Callaway was 
sure they would be followed and rescued. To mark 
the line of their flight she broke off twigs from the 
bushes, and when threatened with the tomahawk for 
doing this, she tore off" strips from her dress. The In- 
dians carefully covered their trail, compelling the girls 
to walk apart, as their captors did, in the thick cane, 
and to wade up and down the little brooks. 

Boone started in pursuit the same evening. All next 
day he followed the tangled trail like a bloodhound, 
and early the following morning came on the Indians, 
camped by a buffalo calf which they had just killed and 
were about to cook. The rescue was managed very 
adroitly ; for had any warning been given, the Indians 
would have instantly killed their captives, according 
to their invariable custom. Boone and his companion, 
Floyd, each shot one of the savages, and the remaining 
three escaped almost naked, without gun, tomahawk, 
or scalping-knife. The girls were unharmed ; for the 
Indians rarely molested their captives on the journey 
to the home towns, unless their strength gave out, 
when they were tomahawked without mercy. 

Much the greatest loss, both to Indians and whites, 
was caused by this unending personal warfare. Every 
hunter, almost every settler, was always in imminent 
danger of Indian attack, and in return was ever ready, 
either alone or with one or two companions, to make 
excursions against the tribes for scalps and horses. 
One or two of Simon Kenton's experiences during this 
year may be mentioned less for their own sake than as 
examples of innumerable similar deeds that were done. 

Kenton was a man of wonderful strength and agility, 
famous as a runner and wrestler, an unerring shot, and 



The War in the Northwest 57 

a perfect woodsman. I,ike so many of these early In- 
dian fighters, he was not at all bloodthirsty ; in fact, it 
was hard to rouse him to wrath. When aroused, how- 
ever, few could stand before the terrible fury of his 
anger. Once, in a fight outside the stockade at Boons- 
borough, he saved the life of Boone by shooting an In- 
dian who was on the point of tomahawking him, and 
won praise and admiration from him who was as little 
likely to praise the deeds of others as he was to mention 
his own. 

Kenton, on the expedition to the Sciota, pushing 
ahead of the rest, was attracted by the sound of laugh- 
ter in a cane-brake. Hiding himself, he soon saw two 
Indians riding along on one small pony and chatting 
and laughing together in great good humor. Aiming 
carefully, he brought down both at once, one dead and 
the other severely wounded. As he rushed up to finish 
his work, his quick ears caught a rustle in the cane, 
and looking around he saw two more Indians aiming 
at him. A rapid spring to one side made both balls 
miss. Other Indians came up ; but, at the same time, 
Boone and his companions appeared ; and a brisk 
skirmish followed. When Boone returned home, Ken- 
ton with another stayed behind and later brought back 
in triumph four good horses. 

Much pleased with his success, he shortly made an- 
other raid into the Indian country with two companions, 
this time driving off one hundred and sixty horses, 
which were brought in safety to the banks of the Ohio. 
But the river was so rough that the horses, as soon as 
they were beyond their depth, would turn round and 
swim back. The reckless adventurers, unwilling to 
leave the booty, stayed so long, waiting for a lull in the 
gale, that they were overtaken by the Indians, and, as 



58 The Winning of the West 

their guns had become wet and useless, one of them 
was killed, another escaped, and Kenton himself was 
captured. When the Indians asked him if " Captain 
Boone ' ' had sent him to steal horses, and he answered 
frankly that the stealing was his own idea, they beat 
him lustily with their ramrods, at the same time 
showering on him epithets that showed they had at 
least learned the profanity of the traders. At night 
they staked him out tied so that he could move neither 
hand nor foot ; and during the day he was bound on 
an unbroken horse, with his hands tied behind him so 
that he could not protect his face from the trees and 
bushes. After three days he reached the town of 
Chillicothe, stiff, sore, and bleeding. 

Next morning he was led out to run the gauntlet of 
a row of men, women, and boys, each with a tomahawk, 
switch, or club. When the moment for starting arrived, 
the big drum was beaten, and Kenton sprang forward 
in the race. Keeping his wits about him, he suddenly 
turned to one side, and, dodging those who got in his 
way, by a sudden double he rushed through an opening 
in the crowd, and reached the council-house, which 
protected him for the time being. 

He was not further molested that evening. Next 
morning a council was held to decide whether he 
should be immediately burned at the stake, or should 
first be led round to the different villages. The 
warriors sat in a ring, passing the war-club from one 
to another ; those who passed it in silence thereby 
voted in favor of sparing the prisoner for the moment, 
while those who struck it violently on the ground thus 
indicated their belief that he should be immediately 
put to death. The former prevailed, and Kenton was 
led from town to town to be switched and beaten by 



The War in the Northwest 59 

the women and boys, or forced to run the gauntlet, 
while sand was thrown in his eyes and guns loaded 
with powder fired against his body to burn his flesh. 
Once, while on the march, he made a bold rush for 
liberty, breaking out of the line and running into the 
forest ; but by ill luck, when almost exhausted, he 
came against another party of Indians. 

After this he was often terribly abused by his cap- 
tors ; once his shoulder was cut open with an axe ; 
at another time his face was painted black, the death 
color ; and he was twice sentenced to be burned alive. 
But each time he was saved at the last moment, once 
through the renegade Girty, his old companion in arms 
at the time of Lord Dunmore's war, and again by the 
great Mingo chief, L,ogan. At last, after having run 
the gauntlet eight times and been thrice tied to the 
stake, he was ransomed by some traders who hoped to 
get valuable information from him about the border 
forts, and took him to Detroit. Here he staj^ed until 
his battered, wounded body was healed. Then he de- 
termined to escape, and formed his plan in concert with 
two other Kentuckians, who had been in Boone's party 
that was captured at the Blue lyicks. They managed 
to secure some guns, got safely off, and came straight 
down through the great forests to the Ohio, reaching 
their homes in safety. 



CHAPTER VIII 
CLARK'S conque;st of the iIvLinois, 1778 

KKNTUCKY had been settled, chiefly through 
Boone's instrumentality, in the year that saw 
the first fighting of the Revolution, and it had been 
held ever since, Boone still playing the greatest part in 
the defence. There had developed by the side of Boone 
in this school of the Wilderness a brilliant young Vir- 
ginian named George Rogers Clark. He was of good 
family, well-educated, and, being fond of a wild, roving 
life, he followed the profession of a backwoods surveyor. 
His adventurous spirit early brought him to Kentucky, 
where he quickly became a leader among the daring 
hunters of the border. He took part in Lord Dun- 
more' s war ; and later he was instrumental in making 
Kentucky a county of Virginia (1776). Residing at 
Harrodsburg, Clark took part in the defence of Ken- 
tucky in the petty warfare of the years '76-' 77; but 
his far-seeing and ambitious soul now prompted him to 
use Kentucky as a base from which to conquer the vast 
region Northwest of the Ohio. 

The country beyond the Ohio was not, like Ken- 
tucky, a tenantless and debatable hunting-ground. It 
was the seat of powerful and warlike Indian confeder- 
acies, and of clusters of ancient French hamlets which 
had been founded generations before the Kentucky 
pioneers were born ; and it also contained posts that 

60 



Clark's Conquest of the Illinois 6i 

were garrisoned and held by the soldiers of the British 
king. 

In 1777 Clark sent two young hunters as spies to the 
Illinois country and to the neighborhood of Vincennes, 
though neither to them nor to any one else did he 
breathe a hint of the plan that was in his mind. They 
brought back word that, though some of the adventur- 
ous young men often joined either the British or the 
Indian war parties, yet that the bulk of the French 
population took but little interest in the struggle, were 
lukewarm in their allegiance to the British flag, and 
were somewhat awed by what they had heard of the 
backwoodsmen. Clark judged from this report that it 
would not be difficult to keep the French neutral if a 
bold policy, strong as well as conciliatory, were pursued 
towards them ; and that but a small force would be 
needed to enable a resolute and capable leader to con- 
quer at least the southern part of the country. But it 
was impossible to raise such a body among the scantily 
garrisoned forted villages of Kentucky ; for the pio- 
neers, though warlike and fond of fighting, were prima- 
rily settlers ; their soldiering came in as a secondary 
occupation. 

So Clark, in October, 1777, journeyed back to the 
eastern counties of Virginia, realizing that he must 
look there for help. After a week's rest from his long 
ride he laid his plans before Patrick Henry, then gov- 
ernor of the State, and urged their adoption with fiery 
enthusiasm. The matter could not be laid before the 
Assembly, nor made public in any way ; for the hazard 
would be increased tenfold if the strictest secrecy were 
not preserved. Finally Henry authorized Clark to 
raise seven companies, each of fifty men, who were to 
act as militia and to be paid as such. He also ad- 



62 The Winning of the West 

vanced him the sum of twelve hundred pounds, and 
gave him an order on the authorities at Pittsburg for 
boats, supplies, and ammunition ; while three of the 
most prominent Virginia gentlemen agreed in writing 
to do their best to induce the Virginia Legislature to 
grant to each of the adventurers three hunderd acres of 
the conquered land, if they were successful. He was 
likewise given the commission of colonel, with instruc- 
tions to raise his men solely from the frontier counties 
west of the Blue Ridge, so as not to weaken the people 
of the sea-coast region in their struggle against the 
British. 

Governor Henry's open letter of instructions merely 
ordered Clark to go to the relief of Kentucky, He car- 
ried with him also the secret letter which bade him 
attack the Illinois regions ; for he had decided to as- 
sail this first, because, if defeated, he would then be 
able to take refuge in the Spanish dominions beyond 
the Mississippi. He met with the utmost diflSculty 
in raising men ; for, aside from accidental causes 
and the jealousy between Virginians and Pennsyl- 
vanians, many people were strongly opposed to send- 
ing any men to Kentucky at all, deeming the drain 
on their strength more serious than the value of the 
new land warranted. 

But Clark never for a moment wavered or lost sight 
of his main object, and at last got together four small 
companies of frontiersmen. In May, 1778, he left the 
Redstone settlements, taking not only his troops — one 
hundred and fifty in all — but also a considerable num- 
ber of private adventurers and settlers with their fami- 
lies. He touched at Pittsburg and Wheeling to get his 
stores. Then the flotilla of clumsy flatboats rowed 
and drifted cautiously down the Ohio between the 



Clark's Conquest of the Illinois 63 

melancholy and unbroken reaches of Indian-haunted 
forest, until it reached the falls, where the river broke 
into great rapids of swift water. 'Tliis spot he chose, 
both because from it he could threaten and hold in 
check the different Indian tribes, and because he 
deemed it wise to have some fort to protect in the 
future the craft that might engage in the river trade, 
when they stopped to prepare for the passage of the 
rapids. The few families still remaining with the ex- 
pedition settled here on an island, and in the autumn 
moved to the mainland, where afterwards Louisville 
grew up, named in honor of the French king, who was 
then our ally. 

Here Clark received news of the alliance with France, 
which he hoped would render easier his task of win- 
ning over the inhabitants of the Illinois. He now dis- 
closed to his men the real object of his expedition. 
The Kentuckians and those who had come down the 
river with him hailed the adventure with eager enthu- 
siasm, pledged him their hearty support, and followed 
him with staunch and unflinching loyalty. But the 
Holston recruits, who had not come under his personal 
influence, had not reckoned on an expedition so long 
and so dangerous, and in the night most of them left 
the camp and fled into the woods. 

"When the horsemen who pursued the deserters came 
back, a day of mirth and rejoicing was spent; and then, 
on the 24th of June, Clark's boats, putting out from 
shore, shot the falls at the very moment that there was 
an eclipse of the sun, at which the frontiersmen won- 
dered greatly, but for the most part held it to be a good 
omen. Clark double-manned his oars and rowed night 
and day until he reached a small island off the mouth 
of the Tennessee, where he halted to make his final 



64 The Winning of the West 

preparations, and there fortunately met a little party 
of American hunters, who had recently been in the 
French settlements. They told him that the royal 
commandant was a Frenchman, Rocheblave, whose 
headquarters were at the town of Kaskaskia ; that the 
fort was in good repair, the militia were well drilled 
and in constant readiness to repel attack, while spies 
were continually watching the Mississippi, and the In- 
dians and the coureurs des bois were warned to be on the 
lookout for any American force. If the party were 
discovered, the French, having the advantage in num- 
bers and in the strength of their works, would un- 
doubtedly repel them, having been taught to hate and 
dread the backwoodsmen as more brutal and terrible 
than Indians. But they thought that a surprise would 
enable Clark to do as he wished, and they undertook 
to guide hira by the quickest and shortest route to the 
towns. 

Setting out with their new allies, the little body of 
less than two hundred men started north across the 
wilderness; and on the fourth of July reached the river 
Kaskaskia, within three miles of the town, which lay 
on the farther bank. They kept in the woods until 
after it grew dusk, and then marched silently to a little 
farm a mile from the town, taking the family prisoners. 
From them Clark learned that some days before the 
townspeople had been alarmed at the rumor of a possi- 
ble attack, but that their suspicions had been lulled ; 
and that Rocheblave, the Creole commandant, was sin- 
cerely attached to the British interest, and had under 
his orders two or three times as many men as Clark. 

Getting boats, the American leader ferried his men 
across the stream under cover of the darkness, and, ap- 
proaching Kaskaskia, he divided his force into two 



Clark's Conquest of the Illinois 65 

divisions, one being spread out to surround the town, 
while he himself led the other up to the walls of the 
fort. 

Inside the fort the lights were lit, and through the 
windows came the sounds of violins. The ofiBcers of 
the post had given a ball, and the mirth-loving Creoles, 
3'oung men and girls, were dancing and revelling 
within, and the sentinels had left their posts. One 
of his captives showed Clark a postern-gate by the river 
side, and through this he entered the fort, having 
placed his men round about the entrance. Advancing 
to the great hall where the revel was held, he leaned 
silently with folded arms against the door-post, look- 
ing at the dancers. An Indian, lying on the floor of 
the entry, gazed intently on the stranger's face as the 
light from the torches within flickered across it, and 
suddenly sprang to his feet uttering the unearthly war- 
whoop. Instantly the dancing ceased ; the women 
screamed, while the men ran towards the door. But 
Clark, standing unmoved and with unchanged face, 
grimly bade them continue their dancing, but to re- 
member that they now danced under Virginia and not 
Great Britain. At the same time his men burst into 
the fort and seized the French ofiicers. 

Immediately Clark had every street secured, and sent 
runners through the town ordering the people to keep 
close to their houses on pain of death; and by daylight 
he had them all disarmed. The backwoodsmen pa- 
trolled the town in little squads ; while the French in 
silent terror cowered within their low-roofed houses. 
Clark was quite willing that they should fear the worst; 
and their panic was very great. 

Next morning a deputation of the chief men waited 
upon Clark ; and thinking themselves in the hands of 



66 The Winning of the West 

mere brutal barbarians, all they dared to do was to beg 
for their lives, which they did, says Clark, ' ' with the 
greatest servancy [saying] they were willing to be 
slaves to save their families, ' ' though the bolder spirits 
could not refrain from cursing their fortune that they 
had not been warned in time to defend themselves. 
Clark knew it was hopeless to expect his little band 
permanently to hold down a much more numerous 
hostile population, that was closely allied to many sur- 
rounding tribes of warlike Indians ; he wished above 
all things to convert the inhabitants into ardent adhe- 
rents of the American Government. So he explained 
at length that, though the Americans came as con- 
querors, yet it was ever their principle to free, not to 
enslave the people with whom they came in contact. 
If the French chose to become loyal citizens and to 
take the oath of fidelity to the Republic, they should 
be welcomed to all the privileges of Americans ; those 
who did not so choose should be allowed to depart in 
peace with their families. 

The listeners passed rapidly from the depth of despair 
to the height of joy ; while the crowning touch to their 
happiness was given when Clark, in answer to a ques- 
tion as to whether the Catholic church could be opened, 
said that an American commander had nothing to do 
with any church save to defend it from insult, and that 
by the laws of the Republic his religion had as great 
privileges as any other. The priest, a man of ability 
and influence, became thenceforth a devoted and effec- 
tive champion of the American cause. The only person 
whom Clark treated harshly was M. Rocheblave, the 
commandant, who, when asked to dinner, responded in 
very insulting terms. Thereupon Clark promptly sent 
him as a prisoner to Virginia, and sold his slaves for 






t 



I u. 



li! Q 



9. < 






^ u. 



1 

l! 



Clark's Conquest of the Illinois 67 

five hundred pounds, a sum which was distributed 
among the troops as prize-money. 

A small detachment of the Americans, accompanied 
by a volunteer company of French militia, at once 
marched rapidly on Cahokia. The account of what 
had happened in Kaskaskia, the news of the alliance 
between France and America, and the enthusiastic ad- 
vocacy of Clark's new friends, soon converted Cahokia; 
and all its inhabitants, like those of Kaskaskia, took 
the oath of allegiance to America. Almost at the same 
time the priest, Gibault, volunteered to go, with a few 
of his compatriots, to Vincennes, and there endeavor to 
get the people to join the Americans, as being their 
natural friends and allies. He started on his mission 
at once, and on the first of August returned to Clark 
with the news that he had been completely successful, 
that the entire population, after having gathered in the 
church to hear him, had taken the oath of allegiance, 
and that the American flag floated over their fort. No 
garrison could be spared to go to Vincennes ; so one 
of the captains was sent thither alone to take command. 

Clark now found himself in a position of the utmost 
diflficulty. With a handful of backwoodsmen, imper- 
fectly disciplined, he had to protect and govern a region 
as large as a European kingdom ; he had to keep con- 
tent and loyal a population alien in race, creed, and 
language, while he held his own against the British 
and against the numerous tribes of Indians. He was 
hundreds of miles from the nearest post containing any 
American troops ; he was still farther from the seat of 
government. Indeed, Clark himself had not at first 
appreciated all the dangers as well as possibilities that 
lay within his conquest; but he was full}' alive to them 
now and saw that, provided he could hold on to it, he 



68 The Winninof of the West 



fc. 



had added a vast and fertile territory to the domain of 
the Union. 

The time of service of his troops had expired, and 
they were anxious to go home. By presents and prom- 
ises he managed to re-enlist one hundred of them for 
eight months longer, and then, finding that many of 
the more adventurous young natives were anxious to 
take service, he enlisted enough of them to fill up all 
four companies to their original strength. His whole 
leisure was spent in drilling the men, Americans and 
French alike, and in a short time he turned them into 
as orderly and well-disciplined a body as could be found 
in any garrison of regulars. 

He also established very friendly relations with the 
Spanish captains of the scattered villages across the 
Mississippi ; for the Spaniards were very hostile to 
the British, and had not yet begun to realize that they 
had even more to dread from the Americans. 

Clark took upon himself the greater task of dealing 
with a huge horde of savages, representing every tribe 
between the Great Lakes and the Mississippi, who had 
come to the Illinois, some from a distance of five hun- 
dred miles, to learn accurately all that had happened 
and to hear for themselves what the Long Knives had 
to say. He met them at Cahokia, chiefs and warriors 
of every grade, dark-browed, sullen-looking savages, 
grotesque in look and terrible in possibility. But for- 
tunately Clark understood their natures, and was 
always on his guard. 

For the first two or three days no conclusion was 
reached, though there was plenty of speech-making. 
But on the night of the third a party of turbulent war- 
riors endeavored to force their way into the house where 
he was lodging and to carry him off. Clark, being 



Clark's Conquest of the Illinois 69 

" under some apprehension among such a number of 
Devils," was anticipating treachery, and promptly 
seized the savages ; while the townspeople took the 
alarm and were quickly under arms, thus convincing 
the Indians that their friendship for the Americans was 
not feigned. 

Clark instantly put the captives, both chiefs and 
warriors, in irons. He had treated the Indians well, 
but he knew that any sign of timidity would be fatal. 
The crestfallen prisoners humbly protested that they 
were only trying to find out if the French were really 
friendly to Clark, and begged that they might be re- 
leased. He with haughty indifference refused to re- 
lease them, even when the chiefs of the other tribes 
came up to intercede. He continued wholly unmoved, 
and did not even shift his lodgings to the fort, remain- 
ing in a house in the town ; but he kept the guards 
ready for instant action. To make his show of indiffer- 
ence complete, he ' ' assembled a Number of Gentlemen 
and Ladies and danced nearly the whole Night." 

Next morning he summoned all the tribes to a grand 
council, releasing the captive chiefs that he might 
speak to them in the presence of their friends and 
allies. The preliminary ceremonies were carefully ex- 
ecuted in accordance with the rigid Indian etiquette. 
Then Clark, standing up in the midst of the rings of 
squatted warriors, with his riflemen clustered behind 
him, produced the bloody war-belt of wampum, and 
handed it to the chiefs whom he had taken captive, 
telling the assembled tribes that he scorned alike their 
treachery and their hostility ; that he would be thor- 
oughly justified in putting them to death, but that in- 
stead he would have them escorted safely from the 
town, and after three days would begin war upon them. 



70 The Winning of the West 

He warned them that, if they did not wish their own 
women and children massacred, they must stop killing 
those of the Americans. Pointing to the war-belt, he 
challenged them, on behalf of his people, to see which 
would make it the most bloody ; and he finished by 
telling them that while they stayed in his camp they 
should be given food and strong drink, but that now 
he had ended his talk to them and he wished them 
speedily to depart. 

Not only the prisoners, but all the other chiefs in 
turn forthwith rose, and in language of dignified sub- 
mission protested their regret at having been led astray 
by the British, and their determination thenceforth to 
be friendly with the Americans. 

In response Clark again told them that he came not 
as a counsellor but as a warrior, not begging for a truce 
but carrying in his right hand peace and in his left 
hand war ; save only that to a few of their worst men 
he intended to grant no terms whatever. To those 
who were friendly he, too, would be a friend, but if 
they chose war, he would call from the Thirteen Coun- 
cil Fires warriors so numerous that they would darken 
the land, and from that time on the red people would 
hear no sound but that of the birds that lived on blood. 
He went on to tell them that there had been a mist be- 
fore their eyes, but he would clear away the cloud and 
would show them the right of the quarrel between the 
IvOng Knives and the king who dwelt across the great 
sea ; and then he told them about the revolt in terms 
which would almost have applied to a rising of Hurons 
or Wyandots against the Iroquois. At the end of his 
speech he offered them the two belts of peace and war. 

They eagerly took the peace belt, but he declined to 
smoke the calumet, and told them he would not enter 



Clark's Conquest of the Illinois 71 

iuto the solemn ceremonies of the peace treaty with 
them until the following day. He likewise declined to 
release all his prisoners, and insisted that two of them 
should be put to death. They even yielded to this, and 
surrendered to him two young men, who advanced and 
sat down before him on the floor, covering their heads 
with their blankets, to receive the tomahawk. Then 
he granted them full peace, forgave the young men, 
and the next day, after the peace council, held a feast. 
The friendship of the Indians was won. Clark ever 
after had great influence over them ; they admired his 
personal prowess, his oratory, his address as a treaty- 
maker, and the skill with which he led his troops. 

After this treaty there was peace in the Illinois coun- 
try ; the Indians remained for some time friendly, and 
the French were kept well satisfied. 



CHAPTER IX 

CLARK'S CAMPAIGN AGAINST VINCENNES, 1 779 

HAMILTON, at Detroit, had been so encouraged 
by the successes of his earlier war parties that, 
in 1778, he began to plan an attack on Fort Pitt ; but 
his plans were forestalled by Clark's movements, and 
he abandoned them when the astounding news reached 
him that the rebels had themselves invaded the Illinois 
country, captured the British commandant Rocheblave, 
and that Vincennes likewise was in the hands of the 
Americans. 

He was a man of great energ}?-, and immediately be- 
gan to prepare an expedition for the reconquest of the 
country. While emissaries were sent to the Wabash 
to stir up the Indians against the Americans, every 
soul in Detroit was busy from morning till night in 
mending boats, baking biscuit, packing provisions in 
kegs and bags, preparing artillery stores, and in every 
way making ready for the expedition. Cattle and 
wheels were sent ahead to the most important portages 
on the route ; a six-pounder gun was also forwarded. 
Feasts were held with the Indians, at which oxen were 
roasted whole, while Hamilton and the chiefs of the 
French Rangers sang the war-song in solemn council 
and received pledges of armed assistance and support 
from the savages. 

On October 7th the expedition, one hundred and 

72 



Clark's Campaign Against Vincennes jt, 

seventy-seven strong, left Detroit under the personal 
command of Hamilton himself, who was joined by so 
many bands of Indians on the route that when he 
reached Vincennes his entire force amounted to five 
hundred men. 

Hamilton led his forces across Lake Erie, up the 
Maumee, and by a nine mile carry reached one of the 
sources of the Wabash. But it proved as difficult to 
go down the Wabash as to get up the Maumee. The 
water was shallow, and once or twice dykes had to be 
built that the boats might be floated across. Frost set 
in heavily, and the ice cut the men as they worked in 
the water to haul the boats over shoals or rocks. 
Moreover, at every Indian village it was necessary to 
stop, hold a conference, and give presents. At last the 
Wea village was reached, where the Wabash chiefs, 
who had made peace with the Americans, promptly 
tendered their allegiance to the British, and handed 
over a lieutenant and three men of the Vincennes 
militia, who had been sent out by Captain Leonard 
Helm, then commandant at Vincennes, on a scouting 
expedition. 

From this village an advance guard, under Major 
Hay, was sent forward to take possession of Vincennes, 
but Helm showed so good a front that nothing was at- 
tempted until the next day, the 17th of December, 
when Hamilton came up with his whole force and en- 
tered the town. Poor Helm had been promptly de- 
serted by all the creole militia ; for, loud as had been 
their boasts, at sight of the red-coats they slipped away 
to the British to surrender their arms. Finally, left 
with only two Americans, he was obliged to surrender, 
with no terms granted save that he and his associates 
should be treated with humanity. 



74 The Winning of the West 

The Frencli inhabitants had shown pretty clearly 
that they did not take a keen interest in the struggle 
on either side. They were now summoned to the 
church and offered the chance — which they for the most 
part eagerly embraced — of purging themselves of their 
past misconduct by taking a most humiliating oath of 
repentance. To keep them in good order Hamilton 
confiscated all their spirituous liquors, and in a rather 
amusing burst of Puritan feeling destroyed two billiard 
tables, which he announced were " sources of immo- 
rality and dissipation in such a settlement." 

It had been Hamilton's original plan to proceed im- 
mediately against Clark at Kaskaskia and complete the 
re-conquest of the Illinois country. He had five hun- 
dred men and Clark but little over one hundred. He 
was not only far nearer his base of supplies and rein- 
forcements at Detroit, than Clark was to his at Fort 
Pitt, but he was also actually across Clark's line of 
communications. But the way was long and the coun- 
try flooded, and he feared the journey might occupy so 
much time that his stock of provisions would be ex- 
hausted. So having decided to suspend active opera- 
tions during the cold weather, he allowed the Indians 
to scatter back to their villages, and sent most of the 
Detroit militia home, retaining in garrison eighty or 
ninety whites, and a probably larger number of red 
auxiliaries. Meanwhile Hamilton planned a formid- 
able campaign for the spring, taking measures to rouse 
the Indians in the south as well as in the north. He 
himself was to be joined by reinforcements from Detroit, 
while the Indians were to gather round him as soon as 
the winter broke. He rightly judged that with this 
force of quite a thousand men he could not only recon- 
quer the Illinois, but also sweep Kentucky, where the 



Clark's Campaign Against Vincennes 75 

outnumbered riflemen could not meet him in the field, 
nor the wooden forts have withstood his artillery. 

When the news of the loss of Vincennes reached the 
Illinois towns, and especially when there followed a 
rumor that Hamilton himself was on his march thither 
to attack them, the panic became tremendous among 
the French. They frankly announced that though 
they much preferred the Americans, yet it would be 
folly to oppose armed resistance to the British ; and 
one or two of their number were found to be in com- 
munication with Hamilton and the Detroit authorities. 

In the midst of Clark's doubt and uncertainty, Fran- 
cis Vigo, a trader in St. Louis, crossed thence to Kas- 
kaskia, on being released from prison at Vincennes, 
and told Clark that Hamilton had at the time only 
eighty men in garrison, with three pieces of cannon 
and some swivels mounted, but that as soon as the 
winter broke, he intended to gather a very large force 
and take the offensive. 

Clark instantly decided to forestall his foe, and to 
make the attack himself, heedless of the almost impas- 
sable nature of the ground and of the icy severity of 
the weather. He first equipped a row- galley with two 
four-pounders and four swivels, and sent her off" with a 
crew of forty men, having named her the Willing. 
She was to patrol the Ohio, and then to station herself 
in the Wabash so as to stop all boats from descend- 
ing it. 

Then he hastily drew together his little garrisons of 
backwoodsmen from the French towns, and prepared 
for the march overland against Vincennes. His bold 
front and confident bearing, and the prompt decision 
of his measures, had once more restored confidence 
among the French, and he was especially helped by 



76 The Winning of the West 

the Creole girls, whose enthusiasm for the expedition 
roused many of the daring young men to volunteer 
under Clark's banner. By these means he gathered 
together a band of one hundred and seventy men, at 
whose head he marched out of Kaskaskia on the 7th of 
February, All the inhabitants escorted them out of 
the village, and the Jesuit priest, Gibault, gave them 
absolution at parting. 

The route by which they had to go was two hundred 
and forty miles in length. The weather had grown 
mild, so that there was no suffering from cold ; but in 
the thaw the ice on the rivers melted, great freshets 
followed, and all the lowlands and meadows were 
flooded. They had no tents ; but at nightfall they 
kindled huge camp-fires, and spent the evenings mer- 
rily round the piles of blazing logs, in hunter fashion, 
feasting on bear's ham and buffalo hump, elk saddle, 
venison haunch, and the breast of the wild turkey, 
some singing of love and the chase and war, and others 
dancing after the manner of the French trappers and 
wood-runners. Thus they kept on, marching hard and 
in good spirits until after a week they came to the two 
branches of the Little Wabash. Their channels were 
a league apart, but the flood was so high that they now 
made one great river five miles in width, the overflow 
of water being three feet deep in the shallowest part of 
the plains between and alongside them. 

Clark, having built a pirogue and crossed the first 
channel, put up a scaffold on the first edge of the 
flooded plain. When he had ferried his men over, 
and brought the baggage across and had placed it on 
the scaffold, he swam the pack-horses over. Then he 
loaded the pack-horses as they stood belly-deep in the 
water beside the scaffold, and marched his men on 



Clark's Campaign Against Vincennes "j^j 

through the water until they came to the second chan- 
nel, which was crossed as the first had been. The 
floods had driven the game all away ; so that they soon 
began to feel hunger, while their progress was very 
slow, and they suffered much from the fatigue of 
travelling all day long through deep mud or breast- 
high water. 

On the 17th they reached the Embarras River, but 
could not cross, nor could they find a dry spot on 
which to camp ; but on a small, almost submerged hil- 
lock, they huddled through the night. At daybreak 
they heard Hamilton's morning gun from the fort, that 
was but three leagues distant ; and as they could not 
find a ford across the Embarras, they followed it down 
and camped by the Wabash. There Clark set his 
drenched, hungry, and dispirited followers to building 
some pirogues, which were nearly finished on the morn- 
ing of the 20th. About noon of the same day a small 
boat with five Frenchmen from Vincennes was cap- 
tured, from whom Clark gleaned the welcome intelli- 
gence that the condition of affairs was unchanged at 
the fort, and that there was no suspicion of any im- 
pending danger. 

By dawn of the next day Clark began to ferry the 
troops over the Wabash, hoping to get to town by 
nightfall ; but there was no dry land for leagues round 
about, save where a few hillocks rose island-like above 
the flood. The men pushed on with infinite toil for 
about three miles, the water often up to their chins, 
and camped on a hillock for the night. Clark kept the 
troops cheered up by every possible means, and records 
that he was much assisted by " a little antic drum- 
mer, ' ' a young boy who did good service by making 
the men laugh with his pranks and jokes-^pih-v. 



fT 



9iJtv^' 



y^ The Winning of the West 

Next morning they resumed their march, the strong- 
est wading painfully through the water, while the weak 
and famished were carried in the canoes, which were 
so hampered by the bushes that they could hardly go 
even as fast as the toiling footmen. The evening and 
morning guns of the fort had been heard plainly by the 
men as they plodded onward. Once they came to a 
place so deep that there seemed no crossing, but Clark 
suddenly blackened his face with gunpowder, gave the 
war-whoop, and sprang forwards boldly into the ice-cold 
water ; and the men followed him, one after another, 
without a word. Then he ordered those nearest him 
to begin one of their favorite songs ; and soon the 
whole line took it up, and marched cheerfully onward. 
He intended to have the canoes ferry them over the 
deepest part, but before they came to it one of the men 
felt that his feet were in a path, and by carefully fol- 
lowing it they got to a sugar camp, where they camped 
for the night, still six miles from the town, without 
food, and drenched through. 

That night was bitterly cold, for there was a heavy 
frost, and the ice formed half an inch thick round the 
edges and in the smooth water. But the sun rose 
bright and glorious, and Clark, in burning words, told 
his stiffened, famished, half-frozen followers that the 
evening would surely see them at the goal of their 
hopes. Without waiting for an answer, he plunged 
into the water, and they followed him with a cheer. 
But before the third man had entered the water, he 
halted and told one of his officers to close the rear with 
twenty-five men, and to put to death any man who re- 
fused to march ; and the whole line cheered him again. 

Before them lay a broad sheet of water, covering 
what was known as the Horse Shoe Plain ; the floods 



Clark's Campaign Against Vincennes 79 

had made it a shallow lake four miles across, unbroken 
by so much as a handsbreadth of dry land. On its 
farther side was a dense wood. Clark led breast-high 
in the water with fifteen or twenty of the strongest 
men next him. About the middle of the plain the cold 
and exhaustion told so on the weaker men that the 
little dug-outs plied frantically to and fro to save the 
more helpless from drowning. Those, who, though 
weak, could still move onwards, clung to the stronger, 
and struggled ahead. When they at last reached the 
woods, the water became so deep that it was to the 
shoulders of the tallest ; but the weak and those of low 
stature could now cling to the bushes and old logs, 
until the canoes were able to ferry them to a spot of dry 
land. Many on reaching the shore fell flat on their 
faces, and could not move farther. 

Fortunately at this time an Indian canoe, paddled by 
some squaws, was discovered and overtaken by one of 
the dug-outs. In it was half a quarter of a buffalo, 
with some corn, tallow, and kettles, an invaluable 
prize. Broth was immediately made, and was served 
out with great care ; almost all of the men got some, 
but very many gave their shares to the weakly, rally- 
ing them and joking them to put them in good heart. 
The little refreshment, together with the fires and the 
bright weather, gave new life to all. They set out 
again in the afternoon, crossed a deep, narrow lake in 
their canoes, and after marching a short distance came 
to a copse of timber from which they saw the fort and 
town not two miles away. Here they halted, and 
looked to their rifles and ammunition, making ready 
for the fight. Every man now feasted his eyes with 
the sight of what he had so long labored to reach, and 
forthwith forgot that he had suffered anything, making 



8o The Winning of the West 

light of what had been gone through, and passing from 
dogged despair to the most exultant self-confidence. 

After considering some further information, gained 
from a townsman captured at this point, Clark decided 
on the hazardous course of announcing his approach. 
So releasing the prisoner he sent him ahead with a letter 
to the people of Vincennes, in which he proclaimed to 
the French that he was that moment about to attack 
the town; that those townspeople who were friends to 
the Americans were to remain in their houses, where 
they would not be molested ; that the friends of the 
king should repair to the fort, join the " hair-buyer 
general, ' ' and fight like men ; and that those who did 
neither of these two things, but remained armed and 
in the streets, must expect to be treated as enemies. 
The Creoles in the town, when Clark's proclamation 
was read to them, gathered eagerly to discuss it ; but 
so great was the terror of his name, and so impressed 
and appalled were they by the mysterious approach of 
an unknown army, and the confident and menacing 
language with which its coming was heralded, that 
none of them dared show themselves partisans of the 
British by giving warning to the garrison. The In- 
dians likewise heard vague rumors of what had occurred 
and left the town ; a number of the inhabitants who 
were favorable to the British followed the same course. 
Hamilton, attracted by the commotion, sent down his 
soldiers to find out what had occurred ; but before they 
succeeded, the Americans were upon them. 

Just when the gathering dusk prevented any dis- 
covery of his real numbers, Clark entered the town, 
and detaching fiftj'- men to guard against the return of 
a scouting party that had been sent out, he attacked 
the fort with the rest. A few of the young Creoles of 



Clark's Campaign Against Vincennes 8i 

the town were allowed to join in the attack, it being 
deemed good policy to commit them definitely to the 
American side ; while others rendered much assistance, 
especially by supplying ammunition to Clark's scanty 
store. Firing was kept up with very little intermission 
throughout the night. At one o'clock the moon set, 
and Clark took advantage of the darkness to throw up 
an entrenchment, from behind which at sunrise on the 
24th the riflemen opened a hot fire into the port- holes 
of the strongest battery, and speedily silenced both its 
guns. The artillery and musketry of the defenders 
did very little damage to the assailants, who lost but 
one man wounded. In return, the backwoodsmen, by 
firing into the ports, soon rendered it impossible for the 
guns to be run out and served, and killed or severely 
wounded six or eight of the garrison. 

Early in the forenoon Clark summoned the fort to 
surrender, and while waiting for the return of the flag 
he gave his men the opportunity of getting breakfast, 
the first regular meal they had had for six days. 
Hamilton's counter-proposal of a three-days' truce 
Clark instantly rejected and ordered the firing to begin 
again. While the negotiations were going on a party 
of Hamilton's Indians returned from a successful scalp- 
ing expedition against the frontier, and being ignorant 
of what had taken place marched straight into the 
town. Some of Clark's backwoodsmen instantly fell 
on them and killed or captured nine, besides two 
French partisans who had been out with them. One 
of the latter, the son of a Creole lieutenant in Clark's 
troops, after much pleading by his father and friends, 
procured the release of himself and his comrade. But 
Clark determined to make a signal example of the 
six captured Indians, both to strike terror into the 



82 The Winning of the West 



f5 



rest and to show them how powerless the British were 
to protect them ; so he had them led within sight of 
the fort and there tomahawked and thrown into the 
river. 

In the afternoon Hamilton sent out another flag, and 
he and Clark met in the old French church to arrange 
for the capitulation. It was finally agreed that the 
garrison, seventy-nine men in all, should surrender as 
prisoners of war " to a set of uncivilized Virginia woods- 
men armed with rifles," as the British commander has 
left it recorded. In truth, it was a most notable achieve- 
ment. Clark had taken, without artillery, a heavy 
stockade, protected by cannon and swivels, and garri- 
soned by trained soldiers. His superiority in numbers 
was very far from being in itself sufficient to bring 
about the result, as witness the almost invariable suc- 
cess with which the similar but smaller Kentucky forts, 
unprovided with artillery and held by fewer men, were 
defended against much larger forces than Clark's. 
Much credit belongs to Clark's men, but most belongs 
to their leader. The boldness of his plan and the 
resolute skill with which he followed it out com- 
bined to make his feat the most memorable of all the 
deeds done west of the Alleghanies in the Revolution- 
ary war. 

Immediately after taking the fort Clark sent Helm 
and fifty men, in boats armed with swivels, up the 
Wabash to intercept a party of forty French volunteers 
from Detroit, who were bringing to Vincennes bateaux 
heavily laden with goods of all kinds, to the value of 
ten thousand pounds sterling. In a few days Helm 
returned successful, and the spoils, together with the 
goods taken at Vincennes, were distributed among the 
soldiers, who ' ' got almost rich. ' ' The gunboat Willing 



Clark's Campaign Against Vincennes 83 

appeared shortly after the taking of the fort, the crew 
bitterly disappointed that they were not in time for 
the fighting. The long-looked-for messenger from 
the governor of Virginia also arrived, bearing to the 
soldiers the warm thanks of the legislature of that 
State for their capture of Kaskaskia and the promise 
of more substantial reward. 

Clark was forced to parole most of his prisoners, but 
twenty-seven, including Hamilton himself, were sent 
to Virginia. The backwoodsmen regarded Hamilton 
with revengeful hatred, and he was not well treated 
while among them, save only by Boone — for the kind- 
hearted, fearless old pioneer never felt anything but 
pity for a fallen enemy. 

Clark soon received some small reinforcements, and 
was able to establish permanent garrisons at Vincennes, 
Kaskaskia, and Cahokia. With the Indian tribes who 
lived round about he made firm peace ; against some 
hunting bands of Delawares, who came in and began 
to commit ravages, he waged ruthless and untiring 
war. His own men worshipped him ; the French 
loved and stood in awe of him, while the Indians re- 
spected and feared him greatly. During the remainder 
of the Revolutionary war the British were not able to 
make any serious effort to shake the hold he had given 
the Americans on the region lying around and between 
Vincennes and the Illinois. Moreover he so effectually 
pacified the tribes between the Wabash and the Missis- 
sippi that they did not become open and formidable 
foes of the whites until, with the close of the war 
against Britain, Kentucky passed out of the stage 
when Indian hostilities threatened her very life. 

Clark himself, towards the end of 1779, took up his 
abode at the Falls of the Ohio, where he served in some 



84 



The Winning of the West 



sort as a shield both for the Illinois and for Kentucky. 
He was ultimately made a brigadier-general of the 
Virginia militia, and to the harassed settlers in Ken- 
tucky his mere name was a tower of strength. 



CHAPTER X 

THE) MORAVIAN MASSACRE, 1779-1782 

AFTER the Moravian Indians were led by their 
missionary pastors to the banks of the Muskin- 
gum they dwelt peacefully and unharmed for several 
years. In Lord Dunmore's war special care was taken 
by the white leaders that these Quaker Indians should 
not be harmed ; and their villages of Salem, Gnaden- 
hutten, and Schonbrunn received no damage whatever. 
During the early years of the Revolutionary struggle 
they were not molested, but dwelt in peace and comfort 
in their roomy cabins of squared timbers, cleanly and 
quiet, industriously tilling the soil, abstaining from all 
strong drink, schooling their children, and keeping the 
Seventh Day as a day of rest. They sought to observe 
strict neutrality, harming neither the Americans nor 
the Indians, nor yet the allies of the latter, the British 
and French at Detroit. They hoped thereby to offend 
neither side, and to escape unhurt themselves. 

But this was wholly impossible. They occupied an 
utterly untenable position. Their villages lay midway 
between the white settlements southeast of the Ohio, 
and the towns of the Indians round Sandusky, the bit- 
terest foes of the Americans, and those most completely 
under British influence. They were on the trail that 
the war parties followed, whether-they struck at Ken- 
tucky or at the valleys of the Alleghany and Monon- 

85 



86 The Winning of the West 

galiela. Consequently the Sandusky Indians used the 
Moravian villages as half-way houses, at which to halt 
and refresh themselves whether starting on a foray or 
returning with scalps and plunder. 

By the time the war had lasted four or five 5^ears both 
the Indians and the backwoodsmen had become fear- 
fully exasperated with the unlucky Moravians. The 
Sandusky Indians were largely Wyandots, Shawnees, 
and Delawares, the latter being fellow-tribesmen of the 
Christian Indians; and so they regarded the Moravians 
as traitors to the cause of their kinsfolk, because they 
would not take up the hatchet against the whites. The 
British at Detroit feared lest the Americans might use 
the Moravian villages as a basis from which to attack 
the lake posts ; they also coveted their men as allies ; 
atid so the baser among their officers urged the San- 
dusky tribes to break up the villages and drive off the 
missionaries. The other Indian tribes likewise re- 
garded them with angry contempt and hostility ; the 
Iroquois once sent word to the Chippewas and Ottawas 
that they gave them the Christian Indians " to make 
broth of." 

The Americans became even more exasperated. The 
war parties that plundered and destroyed their homes 
got shelter and refreshment from the Moravians, — who, 
indeed, dared not refuse it. The backwoodsmen could 
not or would not see that this help was given with the 
utmost reluctance. Soon the frontiersmen began to 
clamor for the destruction of the Moravian towns ; yet 
for a little while they were restrained by the Conti- 
nental officers of the few border forts, who always 
treated these harmless Indians with the utmost kind- 
ness. 

The first blow the Moravians received was from the 



The Moravian Massacre 87 

wild Indians. In the fall of this same year (1781) their 
towns were suddenly visited by a horde of armed war- 
riors, horsemen and footmen, from Sandusky and De- 
troit. These warriors insisted on the Christian Indians 
abandoning their villages and accompanying them back 
to Sandusky and Detroit; and they destroyed many of 
the houses, and much of the food for the men and the 
fodder for the horses and cattle. The Moravians 
begged humbly to be left where they were, but without 
avail. They were forced away to Lake Erie, the mis- 
sionaries being taken to Detroit, while the Indians were 
left in great want on the plains of Sandusky. Many 
of them gradually made their way back to their deso- 
late homes. 

A few Moravians had escaped, and remained in their 
villages ; but these were soon captured by a small de- 
tachment of American militia, under Col. David Wil- 
liamson, and were brought to Fort Pitt, where the 
Continental commander, Col. John Gibson, at once re- 
leased them, and sent them back to the villages un- 
harmed. Gibson had all along been a firm friend of 
the Moravians. He had protected them against the 
violence of the borderers, and had written repeated and 
urgent letters to Congress and to his superior ofiicers, 
asking that some steps might be taken to protect them. 

The very day after Gibson sent the Christian Indians 
back to their homes, several murders were committed 
near Pittsburg, and many of the frontiersmen insisted 
that they were done with the good will or connivance 
of the Moravians. The settlements had suffered greatly 
all summer long, and the people clamored savagely 
against all the Indians, blaming both Gibson and Wil- 
liamson for not having killed or kept captive their 
prisoners. The ruffianly and vicious of course clamored 



88 The Winninor of the West 



& 



louder than any ; the mass of people who are always led 
by others, chimed in, in a somewhat lower key; and 
many good men were silent. Williamson was physi- 
cally a fairly brave officer and not naturally cruel ; but 
he was weak and ambitious, ready to yield to any popu- 
lar demand, and, if it would advance his own interests, 
to connive at any act of barbarity. Gibson, however, 
who was a very different man, paid no heed to the cry 
raised against him. 

In 1782 the Indian outrages on the frontiers began 
very early. In February several families of settlers 
were butchered, some under circumstances of peculiar 
atrocity. In particular, four Sandusky Indians, having 
taken some prisoners, impaled two of them, a woman 
and a child, while on their way to the Moravian towns, 
where they rested and ate, prior to continuing their 
journey with their remaining captives. When they 
left they warned the Moravians that white men were 
on their trail. A white man who had just escaped this 
same impaling party, also warned the Moravians that 
the exasperated borderers were preparing a party to 
kill them ; and Gibson, from Fort Pitt, sent a messenger 
to them, who, however, arrived too late. But the poor 
Christian Indians showed a curious apathy ; their senses 
were numbed and dulled by their misfortunes, and they 
quietly awaited their doom. 

It was not long deferred. Eighty or ninety frontiers- 
men, under Williamson, hastily gathered together to 
destroy the Moravian towns. It was, of course, just 
such an expedition as most attracted the brutal, the 
vicious, and the ruffianly ; but a few decent men, to 
their shame, went along. They started in March, and 
on the third day reached the fated villages. That no 
circumstance might be wanting to fill the measure of 



The Moravian Massacre 89 

their infamy, they spoke the Indians fair, assured them 
that they meant well, and spent an hour or two in 
gathering together those who were in Salem and 
Guadenhutten, putting them all in two houses at the 
latter place. Those at the third town, of Schonbrunn 
got warning and made their escape. 

As soon as the unsuspecting Indians were gathered 
in the two houses, the men in one, the women and 
children in the other, the whites held a council as to 
what should be done with them. The great majority 
were for putting them instantly to death. Eighteen 
men protested, and asked that the lives of the poor 
creatures should be spared, and then withdrew, calling 
God to witness that they were innocent of the crime 
about to be committed. By rights they should have 
protected the victims at any hazard. One of them took 
off with him a small Indian boy, whose life was thus 
spared. With this exception only two lads escaped. 

When the murderers told the doomed Moravians 
their fate, they merely requested a short delay in which 
to prepare themselves for death. They asked one an- 
other's pardon for whatever wrongs they might have 
done, knelt down and prayed, kissed one another fare- 
well, ' ' and began to sing hymns of hope and of praise 
to the Most High." Then the white butchers entered 
the houses and put to death the ninety-six men, women, 
and children that were within their walls. 

When the full particulars of the affair were known, 
all the best leaders of the border, almost all the most 
famous Indian fighters, joined in denouncing it. Nor 
is it right that the whole of the frontier folk should 
bear the blame for the deed. It is a fact, honorable and 
worthy of mention, that the Kentuckians were never 
implicated in this or any similar massacre. But at the 



90 The Winning of the West 

time, and in their own neighborhood — the corner of 
the Upper Ohio valley where Pennsylvania and Vir- 
ginia touch — the conduct of the murderers of the 
Moravians aroused no condemnation. 

In May a body of four hundred and eighty Pennsyl- 
vania and Virginia militia gathered at Mingo Bottom, 
on the Ohio, with the purpose of marching against and 
destroying the towns of the hostile Wyandots and 
Delawares in the neighborhood of the Sandusky River. 
The Sandusky Indians were those whose attacks were 
most severely felt by that portion of the frontier ; and 
for their repeated and merciless ravages they deserved 
the severest chastisement. 

The expedition against them was from every point 
of view just ; and it was undertaken to punish them, 
and without any definite idea of attacking the remnant 
of the Moravians who were settled among them. On 
the other hand, the militia included in their ranks 
most of those who had taken part in the murderous ex- 
pedition of two months before. How little the militia 
volunteers disapproved of the Moravian massacre was 
shown when, as was the custom, they met to choose a 
leader ; for Williamson, who commanded at the mas- 
sacre, was beaten by only five votes, his successful 
opponent being Colonel William Crawford. 

After nine days' steady marching through the un- 
broken forests they came out on the Sandusky plains, 
billowy stretches of prairie covered with high-coarse 
grass and dotted with islands of timber. Crawford 
hoped to surprise the Indian towns ; but his progress 
was slow and the militia every now and then fired 
off their guns. The savages dogged his march and 
knew all his movements, and obtained from Detroit a 
number of lake Indians and a body of rangers and 



The Moravian Massacre 91 

Canadian volunteers, under Captain Caldwell, as a 
reinforcement. 

On the fourth of June Crawford's troops reached one 
of the Wyandot towns. Finding this to be deserted, 
the army marched on, and late in the afternoon en- 
countered Caldwell and his Detroit rangers, together 
with about two hundred Delawares, Wyandots, and 
lake Indians, posted in a grove. A hot skirmish en- 
sued, in which, in spite of Crawford's superiority in 
force, and of the exceptionally favorable nature of the 
country, he failed to gain any marked advantage. His 
troops, containing so large a leaven of the murderers 
of the Moravians, certainly showed small fighting ca- 
pacity when matched against armed men who could 
defend themselves. After the first few minutes neither 
side gained or lost ground. 

That night Crawford's men slept by their watch-fires 
in the grove that was won in the first rush, their foes 
camping round about in the open prairie. Next morn- 
ing the British and Indians were not inclined to renew 
the attack, wishing to wait until further reinforcements 
should arrive. The only chance for the American 
militia was to crush their enemies instantly ; yet they 
lay idle all day long, save for an occasional harmless 
skirmish. Crawford's generalship was as poor as the 
soldiership of his men. 

In the afternoon the Indians were joined by one 
hundred and forty Shawnees. At sight of this acces- 
sion of strength the dispirited militia gave up all 
thought of anything but flight, though they were still 
equal in numbers to their foes. That night they be- 
gan a hurried and disorderly retreat. The Shawnees 
and Delawares attacked them in the darkness, causing 
some loss and great confusion, and a few of the troops 



92 The Winning of the West 

got into the marsli. As Crawford was among the 
missing, Williamson took command, and hastily con- 
tinued the retreat. The savages, however, did not 
make a very hot pursuit ; so the defeated Americans 
reached Mingo Bottom on the 13th of the month with 
little further loss. Many of the stragglers came in 
afterwards. In all about seventy either died of their 
wounds, were killed outright, or were captured. Among 
the latter was Crawford himself, who had become sepa- 
rated from the main body when it began its disorderly 
night retreat. After abandoning his jaded horse he 
started homewards on foot, but fell into the hands of a 
small party of Delawares, together with a companion 
named Knight. 

Crawford was burned alive at the stake; but Knight 
escaped from his captor while being taken to a neigh- 
boring village to be burned. For the Indians were 
fearfully exasperated by the Moravian massacre ; and 
some of the former Moravians, who had joined their 
wild tribesmen, told the prisoners that from that time 
on not a single captive should escape torture. 

Slover, another captive, was taken round to various 
Indian villages and saw a number of his companions 
tomahawked or tortured to death. At last he too was 
condemned to be burned, and was actually tied to the 
stake. But a heavy shower came on, so wetting the 
wood that it was determined to reprieve him till 
the morrow. 

That night he was bound and put in a wigwam under 
the care of three warriors. They laughed and chatted 
with the prisoner, mocking him, and describing to him 
with relish all the torments that he was to suffer. At 
last they fell asleep, and just before daybreak he man- 
aged to slip out of his rope and escape, entirely naked. 



The Moravian Massacre 93 

Catching a horse, he galloped at speed for seventy 
miles, until his horse dropped dead under him late in 
the afternoon. Continuing the race on foot, at last he 
halted, sick, and weary; but hearing afar off the halloo 
of his pursuers, he ran until after dark. He then 
snatched a few hours' restless sleep ; but as soon as the 
moon rose he renewed his run for life, until at last he 
distanced his enemies, and, naked, bruised, and torn, 
on the morning of the sixth day he reached Wheeling. 

Until near the close of the year 1782 the settlements 
along the upper Ohio suffered heavily, a deserved retri- 
bution for failing to punish the dastardly deed of Wil- 
liamson and his associates. 



CHAPTER XI 

KENTUCKY UNTIL THE END OF THE REVOI.UTION, 

1782-1783 

SEVENTEEN hundred and eighty-two proved to be 
the year of blood for Kentucky also. The British 
at Detroit had strained every nerve to drag into the war 
the entire Indian population of the Northwest, and had 
finally succeeded in arousing even the most distant 
tribes. So, early in the spring, the Indians renewed 
their forays ; horses were stolen, cabins burned, and 
women and children carried off captive. The people 
were confined closely to their stockaded forts, from 
which small bands of riflemen sallied to patrol the 
country. 

In March a party of twenty-five Wyandots came into 
the settlements, passed Boonsborough, and killed and 
scalped a girl within sight of Estill's Station. The 
men from the latter, also to the number of twenty-five, 
hastily gathered under Captain Estill, and after two 
days' hot pursuit overtook the Wyandots. A fair 
stand-up fight followed, the better marksmanship of 
the whites being offset, as so often before, by the su- 
periority their foes showed in sheltering themselves. 
At last Estill despatched a lieutenant and seven men 
to get round the Wyandots and assail them in the rear ; 
but either the lieutenant's heart or his judgment failed 
him ; he took too long ; for meanwhile the Wyandots 

94 



Kentucky 95 

closed in on the others, killing nine, including Estill, 
and wounding four, who, with their unhurt comrades, 
escaped. 

Various ravages and skirmishes were but the prelude 
to a far more serious attack. In July the British cap- 
tains Caldwell and McKee came down from Detroit 
with a party of rangers and an army of over a thousand 
Indians — the largest body of either red men or white 
that was mustered west of the Alleghanies during the 
Revolution. They meant to strike at Wheeling ; but, 
alarmed by the rumor that Clark intended to attack 
the Shawnee towns, they turned back only to find 
that the alarm had been groundless. Most of the 
savages, with characteristic fickleness of temper, then 
declined to go farther ; but with a body of over three 
hundred Hurons and lake Indians, and with their De- 
troit rangers, Caldwell and McKee crossed into Ken- 
tucky to attack the small forts of Fayette County. The 
best-defended and most central of these was Lexington, 
round which were grouped the other four — Bryan's 
(which was the largest), McGee's, McConnell's, and 
Boone's (not Boonsborough). 

The attack was made on Bryan's Station early on the 
morning of the i6th of August. Some of the settlers 
were in the corn-fields, and the rest inside the palisade 
of standing logs ; they were preparing to follow a band 
of marauders which had gone south of the Kentucky. 
Like so many other stations, Bryan's had no spring 
within its walls ; and as soon as a few outlying scouts 
of the approaching party were discovered and an attack 
was to be feared, it became a matter of vital importance 
to lay in a supply of water. It was feared that to 
send the men to the spring would arouse suspicion in 
the minds of the hiding savages ; and, accordingly, the 



96 The Winning of the West 

women went down with their pails and buckets as usual. 
The younger girls showed some nervousness, but the 
old housewives marshalled them as coolly as possible, 
talking and laughing together, and by their unconcern 
completely deceived the few Indians who were lurking 
near by — for the main body had not yet come up. The 
savages feared that, if they attacked the women, all 
chance of surprising the fort would be lost ; so the 
water-carriers were suffered to go back unharmed. 
Hardly were they within the fort, however, when the 
Indians found that they had been discovered, and at- 
tacked so quickly that they cut off some of the men 
who had lingered in the corn-fields. 

At first a few Indians appeared on the side of the 
Lexington road, where they whooped and danced de- 
fiance to the fort. A dozen active young men were 
sent out to carry on a mock skirmish with the decoy 
party, while the rest of the defenders gathered behind 
the wall on the opposite side. As soon as a noisy but 
harmless skirmish had been begun by the sallying 
party, the main body of warriors burst out of the woods 
and rushed towards the western gate. A single volley 
from the loopholes drove them back, while the sally- 
ing party returned at a run and entered the Lexing- 
ton gate unhanned, laughing at the success of their 
stratagem. 

There had been runners who slipped out of the fort 
at the first alarm and went straight to Lexington, where 
they found that the men had just started out to cut off 
the retreat of some marauding savages. They speedily 
overtook the troops, and told of the attack on Bryan's. 
Instantly forty men under Major Levi Todd counter- 
marched to the rescue, seventeen being mounted and 
the others on foot. When they approached Bryan's, 



Kentucky 97 

beiug fired upon by Indians from an adjoining corn- 
field, Todd and the horsemen, galloping hard through 
the dust and smoke, reached the fort in safety. The 
footmen were quickly forced to retreat towards 
lyexington. 

That night the Indians tried to burn the fort, shoot- 
ing flaming arrows onto the roofs of the cabins and 
rushing up to the wooden wall with lighted torches. 
But when day broke, they realized that it was hopeless 
to make any further effort, and sullenly withdrew 
during the forenoon, the 17th of August. 

All this time the runners sent out from Bryan's had 
been speeding through the woods, summoning help 
from each of the little walled towns. The Fa3'ette 
troops quickly gathered. Boone marched at the head 
of the men of his station. The men from lycxington, 
McConnell's and McGee's, rallied under John Todd. 
Troops also came from south of the Kentucky river ; 
Trigg, McGarry, and Harlan led the men from Har- 
rodsburg, who were soonest ready to march, and like- 
wise brought the news that Logan was raising the 
whole force of Lincoln in hot haste, and would follow 
in a couple of days. 

Next morning, after the departure of the Indians, 
the backwoods horsemen rode swiftly on the trail of 
their foes, who retreated toward the Blue Licks, and 
before evening came to where they had camped the 
night before. A careful examination of the camp-fires 
convinced the leaders that they were heavily outnum- 
bered. As they reached the Blue Licks the following 
morning, the 19th of August, they saw a few Indians 
retreating up a rocky ridge that led from the north 
bank of the river. The backwoodsmen halted on the 
south bank, and a short council was held. All turned 



98 The Winning of the West 

naturally to Boone, the most experienced Indian fighter 
present. The wary old pioneer strongly urged that no 
attack be made at the moment, but that they should 
await the troops coming up under Logan. The Indians 
were certainly much superior in numbers ; they were 
aware that they were being followed by a small force, 
and from the confident, leisurel}^ way in which they 
had managed their retreat, were undoubtedly anxious 
to be overtaken and attacked. Todd and Trigg agreed 
with Boone, and so did many of the cooler riflemen. 
But the decision was not suffered to rest with the three 
colonels who nominally commanded. Many of the 
more headlong and impatient desired instant action ; 
and these found a sudden leader in Major Hugh 
McGarry, who, greatly angered, did not hesitate to 
appeal from the decision of the council. Turning to 
the crowd of backwoodsmen, he spurred his horse into 
the stream, waving his hat over his head and calling on 
all who were not cowards to follow him. In an instant 
the hunter- soldiers plunged in after him with a shout, 
and splashed across the ford of the shallow river in 
huddled confusion 

As the Indians were immediately ahead, the array 
of battle was at once formed. The right was led by 
Trigg, the centre by Colonel-Commandant Todd in 
person, with McGarry under him, and an advance 
guard of twenty-five men under Harlan in front ; 
while the left was under Boone. The ground was 
equally favorable to both parties, the timber being 
open and good. But the Indians had the advantage 
in numbers, and were able to outflank the whites. 

In a minute the spies brought woid that the enemy 
were close in front. Whereupon the Kentuckians, in 
single battle-line, galloped up at speed to within sixty 



Kentucky go 

yards of their foes, leaped from their horses, and in- 
stantly gave and received a heavy fire. Boone was the 
first to open the combat ; and under his command the 
left wing pushed the Indians opposite them back for a 
hundred yards. The old hunter of course led in per- 
son; his men stoutly backed him up, and their resolute 
bearing and skilful marksmanship gave to the whites in 
this part of the line a momentary victory. But on the 
right of the advance, affairs went badly from the start. 
The Indians were thrown out so as to completely sur- 
round Trigg's wing. Almost as soon as the firing be- 
came heavy in front, crowds of painted warriors rose 
from some hollows of long grass that lay on Trigg's 
right and poured in a close and deadly volley. Rush- 
ing forward, they took his men in rear and flank, and 
rolled them up on the centre, killing Trigg himself. 
Harlan's advance guard was cut down almost to a man, 
their commander being among the slain. The centre 
was then assailed from both sides by overwhelming 
numbers. Todd did all he could by voice and example 
to keep his men firm, and cover Boone's successful ad- 
vance, but in vain. Riding to and fro on his white 
horse, he was shot through the body, and mortally 
wounded. He leaped on his horse again, but his 
strength failed him; the blood gushed from his mouth; 
he leaned forward and fell heavily from the saddle.' 
With his death the centre gave way ; and, of course, 
Boone and the men of the left wing, thrust in advance^ 
were surrounded on three sides. A wild rout followed,' 
every one pushing in headlong haste for the ford. ' ' He 
that could remount a horse was well off ; he that could 
not, had no time for delay." The actual fighting had 
only occupied five minutes. 

Among the first to cross was a man named Nether- 



Lcf 



lOO The Winninof of the West 



fc> 



laud, whose cautious advice had been laughed at before 
the battle. No sooner had he reached the south bank, 
than he reined up his horse and leaped off, calling on 
his comrades to stop and cover the flight of the others. 
The ford was choked with a struggling mass of horse- 
men and footmen, fleeing whites and following Indians. 
Netherland and his companions opened a brisk fire 
upon the latter, forcing them to withdraw for a moment 
and let the remainder of the fugitives cross in safety. 
Then the flight began again. The check that had 
been given the Indians allowed the whites time to re- 
cover heart and breath. Retreating in groups or singly- 
through the forest, with their weapons reloaded, their 
speed of foot and woodcraft enabled such as had crossed 
the river to escape without further serious loss. 

Boone was among the last to leave the field. His 
son Israel was slain, and he himself was cut off from 
the river ; but turning abruptly to one side, he broke 
through the ranks of the pursuers, outran them, swam 
the river, and returned unharmed to Bryan's Station. 

The loss to the defeated Kentuckians had been very 
great. Seventy were killed outright, including Colonel 
Todd and Ivieutenant- Colonel Trigg, the first and third 
in command. Seven were captured, and twelve of 
those who escaped were badly wounded. The victors 
lost one of the Detroit rangers (a Frenchman), and six 
Indians killed and ten Indians wounded. Almost their 
whole loss was caused by the successful advance of 
Boone's troops, save what was due to Netherland when 
he rallied the flying backwoodsmen at the ford. 

Of the seven white captives four were put to death 
with torture ; three eventually rejoined their people. 
One of them owed his being spared to a singular and 
amusing feat of strength and daring. When forced to 



Kentucky loi 

run the gauntlet he, by his activity, actually succeeded 
in reaching the council-house unharmed; when almost 
to it, he turned, seized a powerful Indian and hurled 
him violently to the ground, and then, thrusting his 
head between the legs of another pursuer, he tossed 
him clean over his back, after which he sprang on a 
log, leaped up and knocked his heels together, crowed 
in the fashion of backwoods victors, and rallied the In- 
dians as a pack of cowards. One of the old chiefs im- 
mediately adopted him into the tribe as his son. 

In a day or two Logan came up with four hundred 
men from south of the Kentucky, tall Simon Kenton 
marching at the head of the troops, as captain of a 
company. They buried the bodies of the slain on the 
battle-field, in long trenches, and heaped over them 
stones and logs. Meanwhile the victorious Indians, 
glutted with vengeance, recrossed the Ohio, and van- 
ished into the northern forests. 

The Indian ravages continued throughout the early 
fall months ; outlying cabins were destroyed, the set- 
tlers were harried from the clearings and a station on 
Salt River was taken by surprise, thirty-seven people 
being captured. Stunned by the crushing disaster at 
the Blue lyicks, and utterly disheartened and cast down 
by the continued ravages, many of the settlers threat- 
ened to leave the country. The utmost confusion and 
discouragement prevailed everywhere. 

At last the news of repeated disaster roused Clark to 
his old-time energy. The pioneers turned with eager 
relief towards the man who had so often led them to 
success. They answered his call with quick enthusi- 
asm ; supplies were offered in abundance, and all who 
could shoot and ride met at the mouth of the lyicking, 
where Clark took supreme command. On the 4th of 



I02 The Winninor of the West 



& 



November, he left the banks of the Ohio and struck 
off northward through the forest, at the head of one 
thousand and fifty mounted riflemen. On the loth he 
attacked the Miami towns, and burned their cabins, 
together with an immense quantity of corn and pro- 
visions — a severe loss at the opening of winter, and 
scattered the forces sent from Detroit to help them. 
To the Indians this was a remarkable display of power, 
coming so soon after the battle of the Blue Licks, and 
they never again attempted a serious invasion of Ken- 
tucky. Thus ended the year of blood. 

At the beginning of 1783, when the news of peace 
was spread abroad, the inrush of new settlers became 
enormous, and Kentucky fairly entered on its second 
stage of growth. The days of the hunters and Indian 
fighters were over. The three counties were changed 
into the " District of Kentucky," with a court of com- 
mon law and chancery jurisdiction. This sat first at 
Harrodsburg, where a log court-house and a log jail 
were immediately built. Manufactories of salt were 
started at the licks, where it was sold at from three to 
five silver dollars a bushel ; large grist-mills were 
erected at some of the stations; wheat crops were raised; 
and small distilleries were built. The gigantic system 
of river commerce had been begun the preceding year 
by one Jacob Yoder, who loaded a flatboat at the Old 
Redstone Fort, on the Monongahela, and drifted down 
to New Orleans, where he sold his goods, and returned 
to the Falls of the Ohio. Several regular schools were 
started, and at Shallowford Station, the sport-loving 
Kentuckians laid out a race-track. 

The first retail store since Henderson's, at Boons- 
borough, was closed in 1775, was established this year 
at the Falls ; the goods were brought in wagons from 




o s 



Kentucky 103 

Philadelphia to Pittsburg, and thence down the Ohio 
in flatboats. Clark undertook to supply the inhabi- 
tants with meat, employing a hunter named John 
Saunders, to whom he furnished three men, a pack- 
horse, salt, and ammunition ; while Saunders agreed 
to be " assiduously industrious " in hunting. Buflfalo 
beef, bear meat, deer hams, and bear oil were the 
commodities most sought after. The meat was to be 
properly cured and salted in camp, and sent from time 
to time to the Falls, where Clark was to dispose of it in 
market, a third of the price going to Saunders. 

Thus the settlers could no longer always kill their 
own game ; and there were churches, schools, mills, 
stores, race-tracks, and markets in Kentucky. 



CHAPTER XII 

THE WATAUGA COMMONWEALTH, 1769-1774 

THE eastern part of what is now Tennessee consists 
of a great valley, running from northeast to 
southwest, bounded on one side by the Cumberland, 
and on the other by the Great Smoky and Unaka 
Mountains ; the latter separating it from North Caro- 
lina. In this valley arise and end the numerous streams 
that combine to make the Tennessee River ; and along 
its whole length ran the great war trail used by the 
Cherokees and their northern foes. As in western 
Virginia the first settlers came, for the most part, from 
Pennsylvania, following these valleys to the southwest; 
so, in turn, to what is now eastern Tennessee, the first 
settlers came mainly from Virginia, from this same 
Pennsylvania stock. 

In 1769, the year that Boone first went to Kentucky, 
the first permanent settlers came to the banks of the 
Watauga. Two years later one of the new-comers sur- 
veyed the Virginia boundary line some distance to the 
westward, and discovered that the Watauga settlement 
came within the limits of North Carolina. Hitherto 
the settlers had supposed that they were governed by 
the Virginian law, and that their rights as against the 
Indians were guaranteed by the Virginian govern- 
ment ; but this discovery threw them back upon their 
own resources. 

104 



The Watauga Commonwealth 105 

As North Carolina was always a turbulent and dis- 
orderly colon}^, unable to enforce law and justice even 
in the long-settled districts, it was wholly out of the 
question to appeal to her for aid in governing a remote 
and outlying community. Moreover, about the time 
that the Watauga commonwealth was founded, the 
troubles in North Carolina developed into open war 
between the adherents of the royal governor, Tryon, 
and the Regulators, as the insurgents styled them- 
selves. As a consequence of these troubles, many 
people from the back counties of North Carolina crossed 
the mountains, and took up their abode among the 
pioneers on the Watauga. 

The settlers along the Watauga early in 1772 found 
themselves obliged to organize a civil government 
under which they should live. Accordingly they de- 
cided to adopt written articles of agreement, by which 
their conduct should be governed ; and these were 
known as the Articles of the Watauga Association. 
They formed a written constitution, the first ever 
adopted west of the mountains. It is this fact of the 
early independence and self-government of the settlers 
along the head- waters of the Tennessee that gives to 
their history its peculiar importance. They were the 
first men of American birth to establish a free and in- 
dependent community on the continent. 

The next step taken by the Watauga settlers was to 
meet in a general convention, akin to the New England 
town-meeting, and to elect a representative assembly. 
This consisted of thirteen representatives, who pro- 
ceeded to elect from their number five to form a com- 
mittee or court, which should carry on the actual 
business of government, and should exercise both 
judicial and executive functions. This court had a 



io6 The Winning of the West 

clerk and a sheriff to record and enforce its decrees. 
Their chairman was also chairman of the representative 
body. 

The five commissioners settled all disputes by the 
decision of a majority ; and in dealing with non-resi- 
dents they made them give bonds to abide by their de- 
cision, thus avoiding any necessity of proceeding against 
their persons. On behalf of the community itself, they 
were not only permitted to control its internal affairs, 
but also to secure lands by making treaties with a for- 
eign power, the Indians ; a distinct exercise of the right 
of sovereignty. 

They held their sessions at stated and regular times, 
and took the law of Virginia as their standard for de- 
cisions. They saw to the recording of deeds and wills, 
and carried on a most vigorous warfare against law- 
breakers, especially horse-thieves. For six years their 
government continued in full vigor; then, in February, 
1778, North Carolina having organized Washington 
County, which included all of what is now Tennessee, 
the governor of that State appointed justices of the 
peace and militia officers for the new county, and the 
old system came to an end. 

In this movement to get a firm government, and in 
the acts of the community in carrying it on, the names 
of James Robertson and John Sevier stand forth most 
prominently. Robertson, a North Carolinian, had 
come over the mountains in 1771. His energy and 
natural ability brought him to the front at once, al- 
though he had much less than even the average back- 
woods education. Both he and Sevier were still under 
thirty years of age. Sevier, who came a year later, 
like his friend Robertson, entered eagerly into the 
dangers and diflSculties of the pioneers, and quickly 



The Watauga Commonwealth 107 

began to exercise an almost unbounded influence over 
the backwoodsmen. This was due largely to his ready 
tact, invariable courtesy, and generous hospitality. 
His skill and dashing prowess quickly won for him a 
place at the head of the county militia, and later made 
him the most renowned Indian fighter of the Southwest. 

Early in 1772 Virginia made a treaty with the Chero- 
kee Nation. Immediately afterwards the agent of the 
British Government among the Cherokees ordered the 
Watauga settlers to instantly leave their lands. They 
refused to move ; but feeling the insecurity of their 
tenure they deputed two commissioners to make a treaty 
with the Cherokees. This was successfully accom- 
plished, the Indians leasing to the associated settlers 
all the lands on the Watauga waters for the space of 
eight years, in consideration of about six thousand dol- 
lars worth of blankets, paint, muskets, and the like. 

After the lease was signed a day was appointed on 
which to hold a great race, wrestling matches and other 
sports, at Watauga. Not only many whites from the 
various settlements, but also a number of Indians, came 
to see or take part in the sports; and all went well 
until the evening, when some lawless men, who had 
been lurking in the woods round about, killed an In- 
dian, whereat his fellows left the spot in great anger. 

The settlers, alarmed at the prospect of an Indian 
war, were rescued by the daring of Robertson. Leav- 
ing the others to build a palisaded fort, Robertson set 
off alone through the woods and followed the great war 
trail down to the Cherokee towns. His quiet, reso- 
lute fearlessness impressed the savages to whom he 
went, and helped to save his life ; moreover, the Chero- 
kees knew him and trusted his word. His ready tact 
and knowledge of Indian character did the rest. He 



io8 The Winninor of the West 



fc> 



persuaded the chiefs and warriors to meet him in coun- 
cil, assured them of the anger and sorrow with which 
all the Watauga people viewed the murder, which had 
undoubtedly been committed by some outsider, and 
wound up by declaring his determination to have the 
wrong-doer arrested and punished for his cririie. The 
Indians finally consented to pass the affair over and 
not take vengeance upon innocent men. Then the 
daring backwoods diplomatist, well pleased with the 
success of his mission, returned to the anxious little 
community. 

For several years after they made their lease with 
the Cherokees the men of the Watauga, or, as they 
afterwards were called, of the Holston settlements, were 
not troubled by their Indian neighbors. By degrees 
they wrought out of the wilderness comfortable homes 
filled with plenty ; and they successfully solved the 
diflScult problem of self-government. 



CHAPTER XIII 

king's mountain, 1780 

DURING the Revolutionary war the men of the 
west for the most part took no share in the act- 
ual campaigning against the British and Hessians. 
Their duty was to conquer and hold the wooded wil- 
derness that stretched westward to the Mississippi ; 
and to lay therein the foundations of many future com- 
monwealths. Yet at a crisis in the great struggle for 
liberty, at one of the darkest hours for the patriot 
cause, it was given to a band of western men to come 
to the relief of their brethren of the seaboard and to 
strike a telling and decisive blow for all America. 

By the end of 1779, the British had reconquered 
Georgia. In May, 1780, they captured Charleston, 
speedily reduced all South Carolina to submission, and 
then marched into the old North State. Cornwallis, 
much the ablest of the British generals, was in com- 
mand over a mixed force of British, Hessian, and loyal 
American regulars, aided by Irish volunteers and bodies 
of refugees from Florida. In addition, the friends to 
the King's cause, who were very numerous in the 
southernmost States, rose at once on the news of the 
British successes, and thronged to the royal standards; 
so that a number of regiments of tory militia were 
soon embodied. McGillivray, the Creek chief, sent 
bands of his warriors to assist the British and tories on 

109 



I lo The Winning of the West 

the frontier, and the Cherokees likewise came to their 
help. The patriots for the moment abandoned hope, 
and bowed before their victorious foes. 

Cornwallis himself led the main army northward 
against the American forces. Meanwhile he entrusted 
to two of his most redoubtable oflScers the task of 
scouring the country, raising the loyalists, scattering 
the patriot troops that were still embodied, and finally 
crushing out all remaining opposition. These two men 
were Tarleton the dashing cavalryman, and Ferguson 
the rifleman, the skilled partisan leader. 

Patrick Ferguson, the son of Lord Pitfour, was a 
Scotch soldier, at this time about thirty-six years old, 
who had been twenty years in the British army. He 
had served with distinction against the French in Ger- 
many, had quelled a Carib uprising in the West Indies, 
and in 1777 was given the command of a company of 
riflemen in the army opposed to Washington, playing 
a good part at Brandywine and Monmouth. He was 
of middle height and slender build, with a quiet, seri- 
ous face and a singularly winning manner; and withal, 
he was of dauntless courage, of hopeful, eager temper, 
and remarkably fertile in shifts and expedients. He 
was particularly fond of night attacks, surprises, and 
swift, sudden movements generally, and was unwearied 
in drilling and disciplining his men. Not only was he 
an able leader, but he was also a finished horseman, 
and the best marksman with both pistol and rifle in the 
British army. Moreover, his courtesy stood him in 
good stead with the people of the country ; he was 
always kind and civil, and would spend hours in talk- 
ing affairs over with them and pointing out the mis- 
chief of rebelling against their lawful sovereign. He 
soon became a potent force in winning the doubtful to 



King's Mountain iii 

the British side, and exerted a great influence over the 
tories ; they gathered eagerly to his standard, and he 
drilled them with patient perseverance. 

After the taking of Charleston Ferguson's volunteers 
and Tarleton's legion, acting separately or together, 
speedily destroyed the different bodies of patriot sol- 
diers. Their activity and energy was such that the 
opposing commanders seemed for the time being quite 
unable to cope with them, and the American detach- 
ments were routed and scattered in quick succession. 
Tarleton did his work with brutal ruthlessness ; his 
men plundered and ravaged, maltreated prisoners, and 
hung without mercy all who were suspected of turning 
from the loyalist to the whig side. 

Ferguson, on the contrary, while quite as valiant 
and successful a commander, showed a generous heart, 
and treated the inhabitants of the country fairly well. 
Yet even his tender mercies must have seemed cruel to 
the whigs, as may be judged by the following extract 
from a diary kept by one of his lieutenants : " This 
day Col. Ferguson got the rear guard in order to do 
his King and country justice, by protecting friends 
and widows, and destroying rebel property ; also to 
collect live stock for the use of the army. All of which 
we effect as we go by destroying furniture, breaking 
windows, etc., taking all their horned cattle, horses, 
mules, sheep, etc., and their negroes to drive them." 

Ferguson, having reduced South Carolina to submis- 
sion, pushed his victories to the foot of the Smoky and 
the Yellow mountains. Here he learned that some of 
these mountaineers had already borne arms against 
him, and were now harboring men who had fled before 
his advance. By a prisoner he at once sent them- warn- 
ing to cease their hostilities, and threatened that if they 



112 The Winning of the West 

did not desist he would march across the mountains, 
hang their leaders, put their fighting men to the sword, 
and waste their settlements with fire. 

When the Holston men learned of Ferguson's threats, 
they did not wait for his attack, but sallied from their 
strongholds to meet him. Hitherto the war with the 
British had been something afar off ; now it had come 
to their thresholds and their spirits rose to the 
danger. 

At the Sycamore Shoals of the Watauga, the riflemen 
gathered on the 25th of September, Campbell bringing 
from the Virginia section of the Holston region four 
hundred men, Sevier and Shelby two hundred and forty 
each, while the refugees who had fled across the moun- 
tains under McDowell amounted to about one hundred 
and sixty. 

To raise money for provisions Sevier and Shelby 
were obliged to take, on their individual guaranties, 
the funds that had been received from the sale of lands. 
They amounted in all to nearly thirteen thousand dol- 
lars, every dollar of which they afterward refunded. 

On the 26th they began the march, over a thousand 
strong, most of them mounted on swift, wiry horses. 
Their fringed and tasseled hunting-shirts were girded 
in by bead-worked belts, and the trappings of their 
horses were stained red and yellow. On their heads 
they wore caps of coon-skin or mink-skin, with the tails 
hanging down, or else felt hats, in each of which was 
thrust a buck-tail or a sprig of evergreen. Every man 
carried a small-bore rifle, a tomahawk, and a scalping- 
knife. A very few of the officers had swords, and 
there was not a bayonet nor a tent in the army. Be- 
fore leaving their camping-ground at the Sycamore 
Shoals they gathered in an open grove to hear a stern 



King's Mountain 113 

old Presbyterian preacher invoke on the enterprise the 
blessing of Jehovah. 

The army marched along Doe River, driving their 
beef cattle with them, and went up the pass between 
Roan and Yellow mountains. The table-land on the 
top was deep in snow. Here two tories who were in 
Sevier's band deserted and fled to warn Ferguson; and 
the troops, on learning of the desertion, abandoned 
their purpose of following the direct route, and turned 
to the left, taking a more northerly trail. On they 
went, down through the ravines and across the spurs by 
a stony and precipitous path, crossing the Blue Ridge 
at Gillespie's Gap. That night they camped on the 
North Fork of the Catawba, and next day they went 
down the river to Quaker Meadows. 

At this point they were joined by three hundred and 
fifty North Carolina militia, who were creeping along 
through the woods hoping to fall in with some party 
going to harass the enemy. They were under Col. 
Benjamin Cleavland, a mighty hunter and Indian 
fighter, famous for his great size and his skill with the 
rifle, no less than for the curious mixture of courage, 
rough good-humor, and brutality in his character. He 
bore a ferocious hatred to the royalists, and in the 
course of the vindictive civil war carried on between 
the whigs and tories in North Carolina he suffered 
much. He had no hope of redress, save in his own 
strength and courage, and on every favorable oppor- 
tunity he hastened to take more than ample vengeance. 
His wife was a worthy helpmeet. Once, in his absence, 
a tory horse-thief was brought to their home, and after 
some discussion the captors, Cleavland' s sons, turned 
to their mother, who was placidly going on with her 
ordinary domestic work, to know what they should do 



114 The Winning of the West 

with the prisoner. Taking from her mouth the corn- 
cob pipe she had been smoking, she coolly sentenced 
him to be hung, and hung he was without further 
delay or scruple. 

The tones were already on the alert. Some of them 
had been harassing Cleavland, and had ambushed his 
advance guard. But they did not dare try to arrest the 
progress of so formidable a body of men as had been 
gathered together at Quaker Meadows ; and contented 
themselves with sending repeated warnings to Ferguson. 

On October ist the combined forces marched past 
Pilot Mountain, and camped near the heads of Cane 
and Silver creeks. Hitherto each colonel had com- 
manded his own men, there being no general head, and 
even,' morning and evening the colonels had met in 
concert to decide the day's movements. The whole 
expedition was one of volunteers, the agreement be- 
tween the officers and the obedience rendered them by 
the soldiers simply depending on their own free-will ; 
there was no legal authority on which to go, for the 
commanders had called out the militia without any in- 
structions from the executives of their several States. 
Disorders had naturally broken out. 

At so important a crisis the good-sense and sincere 
patriotism of the men in command made them sink all 
personal and local rivalries. On the 2d of October they 
all gathered to see what could be done to stop the dis- 
orders and give the army a single head ; for it was 
thought that in a day or two they would close in with 
Ferguson. They were in Col. Charles McDowell's 
district, and he was the senior officer ; but the others 
distrusted his activitj' and judgment, and were not 
willing that he should command. To solve the diffi- 
culty Shelby proposed that supreme command should 



King's Mountain 115 

be given to Colonel Campbell, who had brought the 
largest body of men with him, and who was a Vir- 
ginian, whereas the other four colonels were North 
Carolinians. This proposition was agreed to ; its 
adoption did much to ensure the subsequent success. 

The mountain army had again begun its march on 
the afternoon of the third day of the month. Before 
starting the colonels summoned their men, told them 
the nature and danger of the service, and asked such 
as were unwilling to go farther to step to the rear ; but 
not a man did so. Then Shelby made them a short 
speech, telling them, when they encountered the enemy, 
not to wait for the word of command, but each to " be 
his own oflScer," and to shelter himself as far as possi- 
ble, and not to throw away a chance ; if they came on 
the British in the woods they were ' ' to give them In- 
dian play," and advance from tree to tree, pressing the 
enemy unceasingly. He ended by promising them that 
their officers would shrink from no danger, but would 
lead them everywhere, and, in their turn, they must be 
on the alert and obey orders. 

When they set out, their uncertainty as to Fergu- 
son's movements caused them to go slowly, their 
scouts sometimes skirmishing with lurking tories. 
They reached the mouth of Cane Creek, near Gil- 
bert Town, on October 4th. Meantime they had 
been joined by several bands of refugee Georgians, 
while a much larger force under Lacey and Hill was 
rapidly approaching them. Lacey, riding over from 
these companies who were marching from Flint Hill, 
reported the direction in which Ferguson had fled, 
and at the same time appointed the Cowpens as the 
meeting-place for their respective forces. That even- 
ing Campbell and his fellow-officers held a council to 



ii6 The Winning of the West 

decide what course was best to follow. Their whole 
army was so jaded that they could not possibly over- 
take Ferguson ; yet his flight made them feel all the 
more confident that they could beat him, and extremely 
reluctant that he should get away. In consequence, at 
daybreak on the morning of the 6th, seven hundred 
and fifty of the least tired, best armed, and best mounted 
men pushed rapidly after the foe. 

Riding all day, they reached the Cowpens a few 
minutes after the arrival of the Flint Hill militia under 
Lacey and Hill. In the council that was then held it 
was decided once more to choose the freshest soldiers, 
and fall on Ferguson before he could retreat or be rein- 
forced. Again the officers went round, picking out the 
best men, the best rifles, and the best horses. Shortly 
after nine o'clock the choice had been made, and nine 
hundred and ten picked riflemen, well mounted, rode 
out of the circle of flickering firelight, and began their 
night journey. A few determined footmen followed, 
and actually reached the battle-field in season to do 
their share of the fighting. 

All this time Ferguson had not been idle. He first 
heard of the advance of the backwoodsmen on Septem- 
ber 30th, from the two tories who deserted Sevier on 
Yellow Mountain. On the ist of October he sent out 
a proclamation well suited to goad into action the rough 
tories, and the doubtful men, to whom it was addressed. 
He told them that the Back Water men had crossed the 
mountains, with chieftains at their head who would 
surely grant mercy to none who had been loyal to the 
King. He called on them to grasp their arms on the 
moment and run to his standard, if they desired to live 
and bear the name of men ; to rally without delay, un- 
less they wished to be eaten up by the incoming horde 



King's Mountain 117 

of cruel barbarians, to be themselves robbed and mur- 
dered, and to see their daughters and wives abused by 
the dregs of mankind. In ending, he told them scorn- 
fully that if they chose to be spat upon and degraded for- 
ever by a set of mongrels, to say so at once, that their 
women might turn their backs on them and look out for 
real men to protect them. 

Exaggerated reports of the increase in the number of 
his foes were brought to Ferguson, as he gradually drew 
off from the mountains, doubling and turning so as to 
puzzle his pursuers and gain time for his friends to 
gather; for on every day furloughed men rejoined him, 
and bands of loyalists came into camp ; and he was in 
momentary expectation of help from Cornwallis. As 
to the report that the approaching foe was from Ken- 
tucky, and that Boone himself was among the number, 
Ferguson cared very little ; but, keeping, as he sup- 
posed, a safe distance away from them, he halted at 
King's Mountain in South Carolina on the evening of 
October 6th, pitching his camp on a steep, narrow hill 
just south of the North Carolina boundary. 

The King's Mountain range itself is about sixteen 
miles in length, extending in a southwesterly course 
from one State into the other. The stony, half-isolated 
ridge on which Ferguson camped was some six or seven 
hundred yards long and half as broad from base to base, 
or two thirds that distance on top. The steep sides 
were clad with a growth of open woods, including both 
saplings and big timber. Ferguson parked his baggage 
wagons along the northeastern part of the mountain. 
The next day he did not move ; he was as near to the 
army of Cornwallis at Charlotte as to the mountaineers, 
and he thought it safe to remain where he was. He 
deemed the position one of great strength, as indeed it 



ii8 The Winning of the West 

would have been, if assailed in the ordinary European 
fashion ; and he was confident that even if the rebels 
attacked him, he could readily beat them back. But as 
General I^ee, " Light-Horse Harry," afterwards re- 
marked, the hill was much easier assaulted with the 
rifle than defended with the bayonet. 

The backwoodsmen, on leaving the camp at the 
Cowpens, marched slowly through the night, which 
was dark and drizzly, keeping a little out of the 
straight route, to avoid any patrol parties ; and at sun- 
rise — the morning of October yth — they splashed across 
the Cherokee Ford. Throughout the forenoon the rain 
continued, but the troops pushed steadily onwards with- 
out halting, wrapping their blankets and the skirts of 
their hunting-shirts round their gun-locks, to keep 
them dry. Some horses gave out, but their riders, like 
the thirty or forty footmen who had followed from the 
Cowpens, struggled onwards and were in time for the 
battle. When near King's Mountain they captured 
two tories, and from them learned Ferguson's exact 
position ; that " he was on a ridge between two 
branches," where some deer hunters had camped the 
previous fall. These deer hunters, now with the on- 
coming backwoodsmen, declared that they knew the 
ground well. Without halting, Campbell and the 
other colonels rode forward together, and agreed to 
surround the hill, so that their men might fire upwards 
without risk of hurting one another. From one or two 
other captured tories, and from a staunch whig friend, 
they learned the exact disposition of the British and 
loyalist force, and were told that Ferguson wore a light, 
parti-colored hunting-shirt ; and he was forthwith 
doomed to be a special target for the backwoods rifles. 

A mile from the hill the final arrangements were 



King's Mountain 119 

made, and the men, who had been marching in loose 
order, formed in line of battle. They then rode for- 
ward in absolute silence, and, when close to the west 
slope of the battle-hill, dismounted and tied their 
horses to trees, fastening their great coats and blankets 
to the saddles. A few of the officers remained mounted. 
The countersign of the day was " Buford," the name of 
the colonel whose troops Tarleton had defeated and 
butchered. The final order was for each man to look 
carefully at the priming of his rifle, and then to fight 
to the death. The right of the American centre was 
composed of Campbell's troops ; the left centre of 
Shelby's. These two bodies separated slightly so as to 
come up opposite sides of the narrow southwestern spur 
of the mountain. The right wing was led by Sevier, 
with his own and McDowell's troops. On the extreme 
right Major Winston, splitting off from the main bod}'- 
a few minutes before, had led a portion of Cleavland's 
men by a roundabout route to take the mountain in the 
rear, and cut off all retreat. He and his followers 
" rode like fox-hunters " until they reached the foot of 
the mountain, galloping at full speed through the rock- 
strewn woods; and they struck exactly the right place, 
closing up the only gap by which the enemy could have 
retreated. The left wing, led by Cleavland, contained 
the bulk of the North and South Carolinians who had 
joined the army at the Cowpens. The different leaders 
cheered on their troops by a few last words as they went 
into the fight ; being especially careful to warn them 
how to deal with the British bayonet charges, and, 
when forced back, to rally and return at once to the 
fight. 

When Ferguson learned that his foes were on him, 
he sprang on his horse, his drums beat to arms, and he 



I20 The Winning of the West 

instantly made ready for the fight. Though surprised 
by the unexpected approach of the Americans, he ex- 
erted himself with such energy that his troops were in 
battle array when the attack began. The outcrops of 
slaty rock on the hill-sides made ledges which, together 
with the boulders strewn on top, served as breastworks 
for the less disciplined tories ; while he in person led 
his regulars and such of the loyalist companies as were 
furnished with the hunting-knife bayonets. He hoped 
to be able to repulse his enemies by himself taking the 
offensive, with a succession of bayonet charges ; a form 
of attack in which his experience with Pulaski and 
Huger had given him great confidence. 

At three o'clock in the afternoon the firing began, as 
the Americans drove in the British pickets. Campbell 
began the assault, riding along the line of his riflemen, 
and ordering them to raise the Indian war-whoop. They 
then rushed upwards and began to fire. Ferguson's 
men on the summit responded with heavy volley-firing, 
and then charged, cheering lustily. The mountain 
was covered with smoke and flame, and seemed to 
thunder. Ferguson's troops advanced steadily, their 
officers riding at their head with their swords flashing ; 
and the mountaineers, who had no bayonets, could not 
withstand the shock. They fled down the hill-side, 
and, being sinewy, nimble men, swift of foot, they were 
not overtaken, save a few of sullen temper, who would 
not retreat and were bayoneted. No sooner had the 
British charge spent itself than Campbell called out in 
a voice of thunder to rally and return to the fight, and 
in a minute or two they were all climbing the hill again, 
going from tree to tree, and shooting at the soldiers on 
the summit. Campbell's horse, exhausted by the break- 
neck galloping hither and thither over the slope, gave 



King's Mountain 121 

out ; he then led the men on foot, his voice hoarse with 
shouting, his face blackened with powder. 

No sooner had Ferguson returned from his charge on 
Campbell than he found Shelby's men swarming up to 
the attack on the other side. Shelby had refused to let 
his people return the dropping fire of the tory skirmish- 
ers until they were close up. Ferguson promptly 
charged his new foes and drove them down the hill- 
side ; but the instant he stopped, Shelby brought his 
marksmen up nearer than ever, and with a deadlier fire. 
While Ferguson's bayonet-men — both regulars and 
militia — charged to and fro, the rest of the loyalists 
kept up a heavy fire from behind the rocks on the hill- 
top. The battle raged in every part, for the Americans 
had by this time surrounded their foes, and were ad- 
vancing rapidly under cover of the woods. Ferguson, 
conspicuous from his hunting-shirt, rode hither and 
thither with reckless bravery, his sword in his left 
hand — for he had never entirely regained the use of 
his right, which had been wounded at Brandywine ; 
while he made his presence known by the shrill, ear- 
piercing notes of a silver whistle which he always 
carried. Whenever the British and tories charged 
with the bayonet, the mountaineers were forced back 
down the hill ; but the instant the red lines halted and 
returned to the summit, the stubborn riflemen followed 
close behind, and from every tree and boulder continued 
their irregular and destructive fire. The peculiar feat- 
ure of the battle was the success with which, after every 
retreat, Campbell, Shelby, Sevier, and Cleavland rallied 
their followers on the instant ; the great point was to 
prevent the men from becoming panic-stricken when 
forced to flee. The pealing volleys of musketry at 
short intervals drowned the incessant clatter of the less 



122 The Winning of the West 

noisy but more deadly backwoods rifles. The wild 
whoops of the mountain men, the cheering of the loy- 
alists, the shouts of the officers, and the cries of the 
wounded mingled with the reports of the firearms; and 
shrill above the din rose the calling of the silver whistle. 
Wherever its notes were heard, the wavering British line 
came on, and the Americans were forced back. Fergu- 
son dashed from point to point, to repel the attacks of 
his foes, which were made with ever-increasing fury. 
Two horses were killed under him ; but he continued 
to lead the charging parties; slashing and hewing with 
his sword until it was broken off at the hilt. At last, 
as he rode full speed against a part of Sevier's men, 
who had almost gained the hill crest, he became a fair 
mark for the vengeful backwoods riflemen, and he fell, 
pierced by half a dozen bullets. The gallant British 
leader was dead, and the silver whistle was now silent. 

During one of the bayonet charges, a backwoodsman 
was in the act of cocking his rifle when a loyalist, dash- 
ing at him with the bayonet, pinned his hand to his 
thigh ; the rifle went off, the ball going through the 
loyalist's body and the two men fell together. As the 
lines came close together, many of the whigs recog- 
nized in the tory ranks their former neighbors, friends, 
or relatives ; and the men taunted and jeered one an- 
other with bitter hatred. In more than one instance 
brother was slain by brother or cousin by cousin. The 
lowland tories felt an especial dread of the mountain- 
eers ; looking with awe and hatred on their tall, gaunt, 
rawboned figures, their long, matted hair and wild 
faces. 

Now that the British regulars had lost half their 
number, that the militia was in the same plight, and 
that the tories, the least disciplined, could no longer be 



King's Mountain 123 

held to their work, the loyalist army broke and fled, 
De Peyster, the next in command, rallied the fugitives 
among the tents and baggage wagons, where he again 
formed them. But their foes still surrounded them 
on every hand, after the fighting had lasted an hour ; 
and as all hope was gone, he hoisted a white flag. 

In the confusion the firing continued in parts of the 
lines on both sides. Some of the backwoodsmen did 
not know what a white flag meant ; others disregarded 
it, savagely calling out, " Give them Buford's play," 
in allusion to Tarleton's having refused quarter to Bu- 
ford's troops. Others of the men as they came up 
began shooting before they learned what had happened. 
A number of the loyalists escaped in turmoil, putting 
badges in their hats like those worn by certain of the 
American militia, and thus passing in safety through 
the whig lines. It was at this time, after the white flag 
had been displayed, that Colonel Williams was shot, 
as he charged a few of the tories who were still firing. 
The flag was hoisted again, and white handkerchiefs 
were also waved, from guns and ramrods. Shelby, 
spurring up to part of the line, ordered the tories to 
lay down their arms, which they did. Campbell, at 
the same moment, running among his men with his 
sword pointed to the ground, called on them for God's 
sake to cease firing ; and turning to the prisoners he 
bade the officers rank by themselves, and the men to take 
off their hats and sit down. He then ordered De Peyster 
to dismount; which the latter did, and handed his sword 
to Campbell. The various British officers likewise sur- 
rendered their swords, to different Americans; many of 
the militia commanders who had hitherto only possessed 
a tomahawk or scalping-knife thus for the first time 
getting possession of one of the coveted weapons. 



124 The Winning of the West 

Of the entire British and tory force about three hun- 
dred were killed or disabled ; and of their four militia 
colonels, two were killed, one wounded, and the other 
captured — a suflScient proof of the obstinacy of the 
resistance. The American loss in killed and wounded 
amounted to less than half that of their foes. Camp- 
bell's command suffered more than any other, the loss 
among the ofiScers being especially great ; for it bore 
the chief part in withstanding the successive bayonet 
charges of the regulars, and the ofl&cers had been 
forced to expose themselves with the utmost freedom, 
in order to rally their men when beaten back. 

The mountainmen had done a most notable deed — 
a striking example of the individual initiative so char- 
acteristic of the backwoodsmen. They had shown in 
perfection the best qualities of horse-riflemen. Their 
hardihood and perseverance had enabled them to bear 
up well under fatigue, exposure, and scanty food. 
Their long, swift ride, and the suddenness of the at- 
tack, took their foes completely by surprise. Then, 
leaving their horses, they had shown in the actual 
battle such courage, marksmanship, and skill in wood- 
land fighting, that they had not only defeated but cap- 
tured an equal number of well-armed, well-led, resolute 
men, in a strong position. The victory was of far- 
reaching importance, and ranks among the decisive 
battles of the Revolution. It was the first great suc- 
cess of the Americans in the south, the turning-point 
in the southern campaign, and it brought cheer to the 
patriots throughout the Union. Its immediate effect 
was to cause Cornwallis to retreat from North Carolina, 
abandoning his first invasion of that State. 

The day after the battle the Americans, after bury- 
ing their dead, fell back towards the mountains, fearing 



King's Mountain 125 

lest, while cumbered by prisoners and wounded, they 
should be struck by Tarleton. The prisoners were 
marched along on foot, each carrying one or two mus- 
kets, for twelve hundred had been captured. The 
Americans had little to eat ; but the plight of the 
prisoners was pitiable. Hungry, footsore, and heart- 
broken, they were hurried along by their victors, who 
gloried in the vengeance they had taken, and recked 
little of magnanimity to the fallen. 

It had come to be common for the victors on both 
sides to hang those whom they regarded as the chief 
offenders among their conquered opponents. As the 
different districts were alternately overrun, the un- 
fortunate inhabitants were compelled to swear allegi- 
ance in succession to Congress and to king; and then, 
on whichever side they bore arms, they were branded 
as traitors. Cornwallis, seconded by Rawdon, had set 
the example of ordering all men found in the rebel 
ranks after having sworn allegiance to the king to be 
hung ; his under- officers executed the command with 
zeal, and the Americans, of course, retaliated. Fer- 
guson's troops themselves had hung some of their 
prisoners. 

All this was fresh in the minds of the Americans 
who had just won so decisive a victory. Inflamed 
by hatred and the thirst for vengeance, they would 
probably have put to death some of their prisoners 
in any event ; but all doubt was at an end when, on 
their return march, they learned that Cruger's victor- 
ious loyalists had hung a dozen of the captured pa- 
triots. This news settled the doom of some of the tory 
prisoners, A week after the battle thirty were con- 
demned to death ; but when nine, including the only 
tory colonel who had survived the battle, were hung, 



126 The Winninor of the West 



& 



Sevier and Shelby peremptorily interfered, saving the 
remainder. 

Leaving the prisoners in the hands of the lowland 
militia, the mountaineers returned to their secure 
fastnesses in the high hill-valleys of the Holston, the 
Watauga, and the Nolichucky. They had marched 
well and fought valiantly, and had gained a great 
victory ; all the little stockaded forts, all the rough log- 
cabins on the scattered clearings, were jubilant over the 
triumph. From that moment their three leaders were 
men of renown. The legislatures of their respective 
States thanked them publicly, and voted them swords 
for their services. 



CHAPTER XIV 

THK HOI^STON SETTLEMENTS TO THE END OF THE 
REVOLUTION, 1 781-1783 

WHEN the men of the Holston or upper Tennessee 
valley settlements reached their homes after 
the King's Mountain expedition, they found them 
menaced by the Cherokees. A constant succession of 
small bands moved swiftly through the county, burning 
cabins, taking scalps, and, above all, stealing horses. 
As the most effectual way of stopping such inroads, the 
alarmed and angered settlers resolved to send a formid- 
able retaliatory expedition against the Overhill towns. 
All the Holston settlements both north and south of 
the Virginia line joined in sending troops. By the first 
week in December, 1780, they had seven hundred 
mounted riflemen ready to march, under the joint 
leadership of Colonel Arthur Campbell and of Sevier, 
the former being the senior officer. They were to meet 
at an appointed place on the French Broad. 

Sevier, starting first, fell in with an Indian band re- 
turning from a foray, and, attacking it, took thirteen 
scalps and all their plunder. Having thus made a very 
pretty stroke, he returned to the French Broad, where 
Campbell joined him on the 226., with four hundred 
troops. Together they laid waste the country of the 
Overhill Cherokees, burning a thousand cabins, fifty 
thousand bushels of corn, killing twenty-nine warriors, 
and capturing seventeen women and children. 

127 



128 The Winning of the West 



& 



Before returning, the commanders issued an address 
to the Otari chiefs and warriors, setting forth what the 
white troops had done, telling the Indians it was a just 
punishment for their folly and perfidy in consenting to 
carry out the wishes of the British agents ; it warned 
them shortly to come in and treat for peace, lest their 
country should again be visited, and not only laid waste 
but conquered and held for all time. 

Though the success of this expedition gave much re- 
lief to the border, Sevier determined to try one of his 
swift, sudden strokes against the warriors from the 
middle towns who were coming to the help of their 
disheartened Overhill brethren. Early in March he 
rode off at the head of a hundred and fifty picked 
horsemen. For a hundred and fifty miles he led them 
through a mountainous wilderness where there was not 
so much as a hunter's trail, through the deep defiles 
and among the towering peaks of the Great Smoky 
Mountains, descending by passes so precipitous that it 
was with difl&culty the men led down them even such 
sure-footed beasts as their hardy hill-horses. At last 
they burst out of the woods and fell like a thunderbolt 
on the middle towns nestling in their high gorges. 
Falling on their main town, he took it by surprise and 
stormed it, killing thirty warriors and capturing a large 
number of women and children ; he burnt two other 
towns and three small villages, destroying much pro- 
vision and capturing two hundred horses, — all with the 
loss of but one man killed, and one wounded. Before 
the startled warriors could gather to attack him he 
plunged once more into the wilderness, carrying his 
prisoners and plunder, and driving the captured horses 
before him ; and so swift were his motions that he got 
back in safety to the settlements. 



The Holston Settlements 129 

In the early summer he made another quick inroad 
south of the French Broad. At the head of over a 
hundred hard riders he fell suddenly on the camp of a 
war party, took a dozen scalps, and scattered the rest 
of the Indians in every direction. A succession of these 
blows completely humbled the Cherokees, and they 
sued for peace ; thanks to Sevier's tactics, they had 
suffered more loss than they had inflicted, an almost 
unknown thing in these wars with the forest Indians. 
In midsummer peace was made by a treaty at the 
Great Island of the Holston. 

Early in 1782 fresh difficulties arose with the Indians. 
In the war just ended the Cherokees themselves had 
been chiefly to blame. The whites were now in their 
turn the aggressors, the trouble being that they en- 
croached on lands secured to the red men by solemn 
treaty. Settlements were being made south of the 
French Broad. This alarmed and irritated the Indians 
and they sent repeated remonstrances to Major Martin, 
who was Indian agent, and also to the governor of 
North Carolina. The latter wrote Sevier, directing 
him to drive off the intruding settlers, and pull down 
their cabins. Sevier did not obey. He took purely 
the frontier view of the question, and he had no inten- 
tion of harassing his own staunch adherents for the 
sake of the savages whom he had so often fought. He 
had much justification for his refusal, too, in the fact 
that, when the Americans reconquered the southern 
vStates, many tories fled to the Cherokee towns, and in- 
cited the savages to hostility ; and the outlying settle- 
ments of the borderers were being burned and plundered 
by members of the very tribes whose chiefs were at the 
same time writing to the governor to complain of the 
white encroachments. 



130 The Winning of the West 

The worst members of each race committed crimes 
against the other, and not only did the retaliation 
often fall on the innocent, but, unfortunately, even 
the good men were apt to make common cause with the 
criminals of their own color. Thus in July the Chicka- 
maugas sent in a " talk " for peace ; but at that very 
time a band of their young braves made a foray into 
Powell's Valley, killing two settlers and driving off 
some stock. They were pursued, one of their number 
killed, and most of the stock retaken. In the same 
month, on the other hand, two friendly Indians, who 
had a canoe laden with peltry, were murdered on the 
Holston by a couple of white ruffians, who then at- 
tempted to sell the furs. They were discovered, and 
the furs taken from them ; but the people round about 
would not suffer the criminals to be brought to justice. 

The great majority of the Cherokees of the Overhill 
towns were still desirous of peace, and after a council 
of their head-men the chief. Old Tassel, of the town of 
Chota, sent on their behalf the following strong appeal 
to the governors of both Virginia and North Carolina. 

" A Talk to Colonel Joseph Martin, by the Old 
Tassel, in Chota, the 25th of September, 1782, in favor 
of the whole nation. For His Excellency, the Gover- 
nor of North Carolina. Present, all the chiefs of the 
friendly towns and a number of young men. 

' ' Brother : I am now going to speak to you. I hope 
you will listen to me. A string. I intended to come 
this fall and see you, but there was such confusion in 
our country, I thought it best for me to stay at home 
and send my Talks by our friend Colonel Martin, who 
promised to deliver them safe to you. We are a poor 
distressed people, that is in great trouble, and we hope 



The Holston Settlements 131 

our elder brother will take pity on us and do us justice. 
Your people from Nolichucky are daily pushing us 
out of our lands. We have no place to hunt on. Your 
people have built houses within one day's walk of our 
towns. We don't want to quarrel with our elder 
brother ; we, therefore, hope our elder brother will not 
take our lands from us, that the Great Man above gave 
us. He made you and he made us ; we are all his 
children, and we hope our elder brother will take pity 
on us, and not take our lands from us that our father 
gave us, because he is stronger than we are. We are 
the first people that ever lived on this land ; it is ours, 
and why will our elder brother take it from us ? It is 
true, some time past, the people over the great water 
persuaded some of our 3'oung men to do some mischief 
to our elder brother, which our principal men were 
sorry for. But 3'ou, our elder brothers, came to our 
towns and took satisfaction, and then sent for us to 
come and treat with you, which we did. Then our 
elder brother promised to have the line run between us 
agreeable to the first treat}^ and all that should be 
found over the line should be moved off. But it is not 
done yet. We have done nothing to offend our elder 
brother since the last treaty, and why should our elder 
brother want to quarrel with us ? We have sent to the 
Governor of Virginia on the same subject. We hope 
that between you both, you will take pity on your 
5'ounger brother, and send Colonel Sevier, who is a 
good man, to have all your people moved off our land. 
I should say a great deal more, but our friend. Colonel 
Martin, knows all our grievances, and he can inform 
you. A string." ' 

' The " strings" of wampuiu were used to mark periods and 
to indicate, and act as remindei'S of, special points iu the speech. 



12,2 The Winning of the West 

Although no immediate results followed these and 
other efforts for peace, towards the end of 1783 a definite 
peace was concluded with the Chickasaws, who ever 
afterwards remained friendly ; but the Creeks and 
Cherokees continued to be a source of annoyance on 
the southern border. Nevertheless, all pressing danger 
from the Indians was over. 

The Holston settlements throve lustily. Wagon 
roads were made, leading into both Virginia and North 
Carolina. Settlers thronged into the country, the 
roads were well travelled, and the clearings became 
very numerous. The villages began to feel safe with- 
out stockades, save those on the extreme border, which 
were still built in the usual frontier style. The two 
towns of Abingdon and Jonesboro, respectively north 
and south of the Virginia line, were the centres of 
activity. In Jonesboro the log court-house, with its 
clapboard roof, was abandoned, and in its place a 
twenty-four-foot-square building of hewn logs was put 
up ; it had a shingled roof and plank floors, and con- 
tained a justice's bench, a lawyer's and clerk's bar, and 
a sheriflPs box to sit in. 

Abingdon was a typical little frontier town of the 
class that immediately succeeded the stockaded hamlets. 
A public square had been laid out, round which, and 
down the straggling main street, the few buildings 
were scattered ; all were of logs, from the court-house 
and small jail down. There were three or four taverns. 
There were a blacksmith shop and a couple of stores. 
The traders brought their goods from Alexandria, 
Baltimore, or even Philadelphia, and made a handsome 
profit. The lower taverns were scenes of drunken 
frolic, often ending in free fights. There was no 
constable, and the sheriff, when called to quell a 



The Holston Settlements 133 

disturbance, summoned as a posse those of the by- 
standers whom he deemed friendly to the cause of 
law and order. There were many strangers passing 
through ; and the better class of these were welcome at 
the rambling log-houses of the neighboring backwoods 
gentry, who often themselves rode into the taverns to 
learn from the travellers what was happening in the 
great world beyond the mountains. Court-day was a 
great occasion ; all the neighborhood flocked in to 
gossip, lounge, race horses, and fight. Of course in 
such gatherings there were always certain privileged 
characters. At Abingdon these were to be found in 
the persons of a hunter named Edward Callahan, and 
his wife Sukey. As regularly as court-day came 
round, they appeared, Sukey driving a cart laden with 
pies, cakes, and drinkables, while Edward, whose rolls 
of furs and deer hides were also in the cart, stalked at 
its tail on foot, in full hunter's dress, with rifle, powder- 
horn, and bullet-bag, while his fine, well-taught hunt- 
ing dog followed at his heels. Sukey would halt in the 
middle of the street, make an awning for herself and 
begin business, while Edward strolled oS to see about 
selling his peltries. Sukey never would take out a 
license, and so was often in trouble for selling liquor. 
The judges were strict in proceeding against offenders 
— and even stricter against the unfortunate tories — but 
they had a humorous liking for Sukey, which was 
shared by the various grand juries. By means of some 
excuse or other she was always let off, and in return 
showed great gratitude to such of her benefactors as 
came near her mountain cabin. 

Court-day was apt to close with much hard drink- 
ing ; for the backwoodsmen of every degree dearly 
loved whiskey. 



CHAPTER XV 

ROBiERTSON FOUNDS THE CUMBERLAND SETTLEMENT, 
1779-1783 

ROBERTSON had no share in the glory of King's 
Mountain, and no part in the subsequent career 
of the men who won it ; for the man who had done 
more than any one in founding the settlements from 
which the victors came, had once more gone into the 
wilderness to build a new and even more typical fron- 
tier commonwealth, the westernmost of any yet founded 
by the backwoodsmen. 

Robertson had been for ten years a leader among the 
Holston and Watauga people, and for the last two 
years (i 777-1 779) he was Indian Commissioner for 
North Carolina. He had been particularly successful 
in his dealings with the Indians, and by his missions 
to them had managed to keep the peace unbroken on 
more than one occasion when a war would have been 
disastrous to the whites. He was prosperous and suc- 
cessful in his private affairs ; nevertheless, in 1779, the 
restless craving for change and adventure surged so 
strongly in his breast that it once more drove him to 
seek out a new home hundreds of miles farther in the 
heart of the hunting-grounds of the red warriors. 

The point pitched upon was the beautiful country 
lying along the great bend of the Cumberland, a spot 
well known to hunters since the time when old Kasper 

134 



The Cumberland Settlement 135 

Mansker and others began their trips thither ten years 
before. Early in the spring of 1779 Robertson had 
left the Watauga settlements with eight companions, 
reaching the Cumberland without mishap, and fixing 
on the neighborhood of the BlujBf, the ground near the 
French Lick, as that best suited for their purpose. A 
few days after their arrival thej^ were joined by another 
batch of hunter-settlers who had come out under the 
leadership of Kasper Mansker. 

As soon as the corn was planted and cabins put up, 
most of the intending settlers returned to their old 
homes to bring out their families, leaving three of 
their number " to keep the buffaloes out of the corn." 
Robertson himself first went north through the wilder- 
ness to see George Rogers Clark in Illinois, to purchase 
cabin-rights from him, under the Virginia law which 
gave each man, for a small sum, a thousand acres on 
condition of his building a cabin and raising a crop. 
This journey gives an insight into the motives that 
influenced the adventurers. For though they were 
impelled largely by sheer restlessness and love of 
change, the most powerful spring of action was the de- 
sire to gain land — not merely laud for settlement, but 
land for speculative purposes. At this time it was un- 
certain whether Cumberland lay in Virginia or North 
Carolina, as the line was not run until the following 
spring. As it turned out, Robertson might have 
spared himself the trip, for the settlement proved to be 
well within the Carolina boundary. 

In the fall many men came out to the new settle- 
ment, guided thither by Robertson and Mansker, 
among them two or three of the I,ong Hunters whose 
wanderings had done so much to make the country 
known. Robertson's especial partner, a man named 



136 The Winning of the West 

John Donelson, also came, bringing a large party of 
immigrants, including all the women and children, 
down the Tennessee and thence up the Ohio and 
Cumberland to the Bluff or French Lick. Among 
them were Robertson's entire family, and Donelson's 
daughter Rachel, the future wife of Andrew Jackson, 
who missed by so narrow a margin being mistress of 
the White House. Robertson, meanwhile, led the rest 
of the men by land, so that they should get there first 
and make ready for the coming of their families. 

The expedition led by Donelson embarked at Hol- 
ston. Long Island, on December 22d, but falling water 
and heavy frosts detained them two months, so that 
the voyage did not really begin until February 27, 
1780. The first ten days were uneventful. The Ad- 
venture, the flag-ship of the flotilla, spent an afternoon 
and night on a shoal, until the water fortunately rose, 
and the clumsy scow floated off. Another boat was 
driven on the point of an island and sunk, her crew 
being nearly drowned ; whereupon the rest of the 
flotilla put to shore, the sunken boat was raised and 
bailed out, and most of her cargo recovered. 

They soon came to an Indian village on the south 
shore. The Indians made signs of friendliness, and 
several canoes then came off from the shore to the 
flotilla. The Indians in them seemed pleased with the 
presents they received ; but when a number of other 
canoes put off, loaded with armed warriors, the whites 
pushed off at once. The armed Indians went down 
along the shore for some time as if to intercept them ; 
but at last they were seemingly left behind. 

There was with the flotilla a boat containing twenty- 
eight men, women, and children, among whom small- 
pox had broken out. To guard against infection, it 



The Cumberland Settlement 137 

was agreed that it should keep well in the rear ; being 
warned each night by the sound of a horn when it was 
time to go into camp. As this forlorn boat-load came 
along, Indians of another village, seeing its defenceless 
position, sallied out in their canoes, and butchered or 
captured all who were aboard. Their cries were dis- 
tinctly heard by the rearmost of the other craft, who 
could not stem the current and come to their rescue. 
But a dreadful retribution fell on the Indians ; for 
they were infected with the disease of their victims, 
and for some months virulent small-pox raged among 
many of the bands of Creeks and Cherokees. 

When the boats entered the Narrows, they had lost 
sight of the Indians on shore, and thought they had 
left them behind. A man, who was in a canoe, had 
gone aboard one of the larger boats with his family, for 
the sake of safety while passing through the rough 
water. His canoe was towed alongside, and in the 
rapids it was overturned, and the cargo lost. The rest 
of the company, pitying his distress over the loss of all 
his worldly goods, landed to see if they could not help 
him recover some of his property. Just then the In- 
dians suddenly appeared almost over them, on the high 
cliffs opposite, and began to fire, causing a hurried re- 
treat to the boats. For some distance the Indians lined 
the bluffs, firing from the heights into the boats below. 
Yet only four people were wounded, and they not 
dangerously. One of them was a girl named Nancy 
Gower. When, by the sudden onslaught of the In- 
dians, the crew of the boat which she was in were 
thrown into dismay, she took the helm and steered, 
exposed to the fire of the savages. A ball went 
through the upper part of one of her thighs, but she 
neither flinched nor uttered any cry ; and it was not 



138 The Winning of the West 

known that she was wounded until, after the danger 
was past, her mother saw the blood soaking through 
her clothes. She recovered, married one of the fron- 
tiersmen, and lived for fift}^ years afterwards, long 
enough to see all the wilderness filled with flourishing 
and populous States. 

Having successfully run the gauntlet of the Chicka- 
mauga banditti, the flotilla was not again molested by 
the Indians. They ran over the great Muscle Shoals 
in about three hours without accident. The swift, 
broken water surged into high waves, and roared 
through the piles of driftwood that covered the points 
of the small islands, round which the currents ran iu 
every direction ; and those among the men who were 
unused to river-work were much relieved when they 
found themselves in safety. 

On the 20th of the month they reached the Ohio. 
Some of the boats then left for Natchez, and others for 
the Illinois country ; while the remainder turned their 
prows up stream, to stem the rapid current of the Ohio 
— a task for which they were but ill-suited. The work 
was very hard, the provisions were nearly gone, and the 
crews were almost worn out by hunger and fatigue. 
On the 24th of March they entered the mouth of the 
Cumberland. The Adventure, the heaviest of all the 
craft, got much help from a small square sail that was 
set in the bow. But it was not until April 24th that 
they reached the Big Salt lyick, and found Robertson 
awaiting them. The long, toilsome, and perilous voy- 
age had been brought to a safe end. 

There were then probably nearly five hundred settlers 
on the Cumberland, one half of them being able-bodied 
men in the prime of life. The central station, the capi- 
tal of the little community, was that at the Bluff, where 



The Cumberland Settlement 139 

Robertson built a little stockaded hamlet and called it 
Nashborough. Among the other Cumberland stations 
was Mansker's (usually called Kasper's), Stone River, 
Bledsoe's, Freeland's, Batons', Clover-Bottom, and 
Fort Union. 

True to their customs and traditions, and to their 
race-capacity for self-rule, the settlers determined forth- 
with to organize some kind of government under which 
justice might be done among themselves and protection 
afforded against outside attack. Not only had the In- 
dians begun their ravages, but turbulent and disorderly 
whites were also causing trouble. Robertson, who had 
been so largely instrumental in founding the Watauga 
settlement, and in giving it laws, naturally took the 
lead in organizing this, the second community which 
he had caused to spring up in the wilderness. 

The settlers, by their representatives, met together at 
Nashborough, and on May i, 17S0, entered into articles 
of agreement or a compact of government. It was 
doubtless drawn up by Robertson, with perhaps the 
help of Henderson, and was modelled upon what may 
be called the " constitution " of Watauga, with some 
hints from that of Transylvania. The settlers ratified 
the deeds of their delegates on May 13th, when to the 
number of two hundred and fifty-six men they signed 
the articles. The signers practically guaranteed one 
another their rights in the land, and their personal se- 
curity against wrong-doers; those who did not sign were 
treated as having no rights whatever — a proper and 
necessary measure, as it was essential that the natur- 
ally lawless elements should be forced to acknowledge 
some kind of authority. 

The compact provided that the affairs of the com- 
munity should be administered by a Court of twelve 



140 The Winning of the West 

Judges, or Triers, to be elected in the different stations 
by vote of all the freemen in them who were over 
twenty-one years of age, three to come from Nash- 
borough, two from Mansker's, two from Bledsoe's, and 
one from each of five other named stations. The 
Court had jurisdiction in all cases of conflict over land 
titles, for the recovery of debt or damages, and was 
allowed to tax costs. The Court appointed whomso- 
ever it pleased to see decisions executed. It had power 
to punish all offences against the peace of the commun- 
ity, all misdemeanors and criminal acts, provided only 
that its decisions did not go so far as to affect the life 
of the criminal. If the misdeed of the accused was 
such as to be dangerous to the State, or one " for 
which the benefit of clergy was taken away by law," 
he was to be bound and sent under guard to some place 
where he could be legally dealt with. In this and vari- 
ous ways a little commonwealth, a self-governing state, 
was created on the banks of the Cumberland as a tem- 
porary method of restraining the evil-disposed until the 
State should give the little community some legal form 
of government. 

For several years after their arrival the Cumberland 
settlers were worried beyond description by a succes- 
sion of small war parties. In 1781 they raised no corn ; 
in the next they made a few crops on fields they had 
cleared in 1780. Many of the settlers were killed, many 
others left for Kentucky, Illinois, or Natchez, or re- 
turned to their old homes among the Alleghanies ; and 
in 1782 the inhabitants, who had steadily dwindled in 
numbers, became so discouraged that they mooted the 
question of abandoning the Cumberland district in a 
body. Only Robertson's great influence prevented this 
being done ; but by word and example he finally per- 



The Cumberland Settlement 141 

suaded them to remain. The following spring brought 
the news of peace with Great Britain. A large inflow 
of new settlers began with the new year ; the Cumber- 
land country throve apace ; and by the end of 1783 the 
old stations had been rebuilt and many new ones 
founded. 



CHAPTER XVI 

THE INRUSH OF SETTLERS, 1784-1787 

AT the beginning of 1784 peace was a definite fact, 
and the United States had become one among 
the nations of the earth ; a nation young and lusty in 
her youth, but as yet loosely knit, and formidable in 
promise rather than in actual capacity for performance. 

On the western frontier lay vast and fertile vacant 
spaces ; for the Americans had barely passed the thres- 
hold of the continent predestined to be the inheritance 
of their children and their children's children. For 
generations the great feature in the nation's history, 
next only to the preservation of its national life, was to 
be its westward growth ; and its distinguishing work 
was to be the settlement of the immense wilderness 
which stretched across to the Pacific. But before the 
land could be settled it had to be won. 

The valley of the Ohio already belonged to the 
Americans by right of conquest and of armed posses- 
sion. North and south of the valley lay warlike and 
powerful Indian confederacies, now at last thoroughly 
alarmed and angered by the white advance ; while be- 
hind these warrior tribes, urging them to hostility, and 
furnishing them the weapons and means wherewith to 
fight, stood the representatives of two great European 
nations, both bitterly hostile to the new America. The 
Briton and the Spaniard opposed the American settler 

142 



The Inrush of Settlers 143 

precisely as the Frenchman had done before them, in 
the interests of their own merchants and fur-traders. 

All the ports around the Great I^akes were held by 
the British ; their officers, military and civil, adminis- 
tering the government of the scattered French hamlets, 
and preserving their old-time relations with the Indian 
tribes, whom they continued to treat as allies. To the 
south and west the Spaniards played the same part, 
scornfully refusing to heed the boundary established to 
the southward by the treaty between England and the 
United States, alleging that the former had ceded what 
it did not possess. They claimed the land as theirs by 
right of conquest. The territory which they controlled 
stretched from Florida along a vaguely defined bound- 
ary to the Mississippi, up the east bank of the latter at 
least to the Chickasaw Bluffs, and thence up the west 
bank ; while the Creeks and Choctaws were under 
their influence. 

Thus there were foes, both white and red, to be over- 
come, either by force of arms or by diplomacy, before 
the northernmost and the southernmost portions of the 
wilderness lying on our western border could be thrown 
open to settlement. 

With the ending of the Revolutionary War the rush 
of settlers to these western lands assumed striking pro- 
portions. All men who deemed that they could swim 
in troubled waters were drawn towards the new coun- 
try. The more turbulent and ambitious spirits saw 
roads to distinction in frontier warfare, politics, and 
diplomacy. Merchants dreamed of many fortunate 
ventures, in connection with the river trade or the 
overland commerce by pack-train. lyawyers not only 
expected to make their living by their proper calling, 
but also to rise to the first places in the commonwealths, 



144 The Winning of the West 

for in these new communities, as in the older States, 
the law was then the most honored of the professions, 
and that which most surely led to high social and 
political standing. But the one great attraction for all 
classes was the chance of procuring large quantities of 
fertile land at low prices. 

The great growth of the West took place in Kentucky. 
The Kentucky country was by far the most widely re- 
nowned for its fertility ; it was much more accessible 
and more firmly held, and its government was on a 
more permanent footing than was the case in the 
Wabash, Illinois, and Cumberland regions. In con- 
sequence the majority of the men who went West to 
build homes fixed their eyes on the vigorous young 
community which lay south of the Ohio, and which 
already aspired to the honors of statehood. 

The immigrants came into Kentucky in two streams, 
following two different routes — the Ohio River, and 
Boone's old Wilderness Trail. Those who came over- 
land, along the latter road, were much fewer in number 
than those who came by water ; and yet they were so 
numerous that the trail at times was almost thronged. 
They struggled over the narrow, ill-made roads which 
led from the different back settlements, until they came 
to the last outposts of civilization east of the Cumber- 
land Mountains ; scattered block-houses, whose owners 
were by turns farmers, tavern-keepers, hunters, and 
Indian fighters. Here they usually waited until a suf- 
ficient number had gathered together to furnish a band 
of riflemen, and then set off to traverse by slow stages 
the mountains and vast forests which lay between 
them and the nearest Kentucky station. The time of 
the journey depended, of course, upon the composition 
of the travelling party, and upon the mishaps en- 



The Inrush of Settlers 145 

countered ; a party of young men on good horses 
might do it in three days, while a large band of immi- 
grants, who were hampered by women, children, and 
cattle, and dogged by ill-luck, might take three weeks. 
Ordinarily six or eight days were sufficient. Even 
when undisturbed by Indians, the trip was accom- 
panied by much fatigue and exposure ; and, as always 
in frontier travelling, one of the perpetual annoyances 
was the necessity for hunting up strayed horses. 

The chief highway, however, was the Ohio River ; 
for to drift down stream in a scow was easier and 
quicker, and no more dangerous, than to plod through 
thick mountain forests. Moreover, it was much easier 
for the settler who went by water to carry with him his 
household goods and implements of husbandry, and 
even such cumbrous articles as wagons, or, if he was 
rich and ambitious, the lumber wherewith to build a 
frame house. All kinds of craft were used, even bark 
canoes and pirogues, or dugouts ; but the flat-bottomed 
scow with square ends was the ordinary means of con- 
veyance. They were of all sizes. The passengers and 
their live stock were of course huddled together so as 
to take up as little room as possible. Sometimes the 
immigrants built or bought their own boat, navigated 
it themselves, and sold it or broke it up on reaching 
their destination. At other times they merely hired a 
passage. A few of the more enterprising boat owners 
speedily introduced a regular emigrant service, making 
trips at stated times from Pittsburg, and advertising the 
carriage capacity of their boats and the times of start- 
ing. The trip from Pittsburg to lyouisville took a week 
or ten days ; but in low water it might last a month. 

The number of boats passing down the Ohio, laden 
with would-be settlers and their belongings, speedily 



146 The Winning of the West 

became very great. An eye-witness stated that be- 
tween November 13th and December 226., of 1785, 
thirty-nine boats, with an average of ten persons in 
each, went down the Ohio to the Falls. As time went 
on, the number of immigrants increased until in the 
year ending in November, 1788, 967 boats, carrying 
18,370 persons, with 7986 horses, 2372 cows, mo 
sheep, and 646 wagons, went down the Ohio. 

There are no means of procuring similar figures for 
the number of immigrants who went over the Wilder- 
ness Road ; but probably there were not half as many 
as went down the Ohio. Perhaps from ten to twenty 
thousand people a year came into Kentucky during the 
the period immediately succeeding the close of the 
Revolution ; but the net gain to the population was 
much less, because there was always a smaller, but 
almost equally steady, counter-flow of men who, having 
failed as pioneers, were struggling wearily back toward 
their deserted eastern homes. In 1785 the population 
was estimated at from twenty to thirty thousand ; and 
the leading towns, Louisville, Lexington, Harrodsburg, 
Boonsboro, St. Asaph's, were thriving little hamlets, 
with stores and horse grist-mills, and no longer mere 
clusters of stockaded cabins. 

The new-comers were mainly Americans from all the 
States of the Union ; but there were also a few people 
from nearly every country in Kurope, and even from 
Asia. All alike prized the wild freedom and absence 
of restraint so essentially characteristic of their new 
life ; a life in many ways very pleasant, but one which 
on the border of the Indian country sank into mere 
savagery. 

In such a population there was of course much 
loosening of the bands, social, political, moral, and re- 



m 





The Inrush of Settlers 147 

iigious, which knit a society together, A great many 
of the restraints of their old Hfe were thrown off, and 
there was much social adjustment and readjustment 
before their relations to one another under the new 
conditions became definitely settled. But there came 
early into the land many men of high purpose and 
pure life whose influence upon their fellows, though 
quiet, was very great. 

Rough log schools were springing up everywhere, 
beside the rough log meeting houses, the same building 
often serving for both purposes. The school teacher 
might be a young surveyor out of work for the mo- 
ment, a New Englander fresh from some academy in 
the Northeast, an Irishman with a smattering of learn- 
ing, or perhaps an English immigrant of the upper 
class, unfit for and broken down by the work of a new 
country. The boys and girls were taught together, 
and at recess played together — tag, pawns, and various 
kissing games. The rod was used unsparingly, for 
the elder boys proved boisterous pupils. A favorite 
mutinous frolic was to "bar out" the teacher, taking 
possession of the school house and holding it against 
the master with sticks and stones until he had either 
forced an entrance or agreed to the terms of the de- 
fenders. Sometimes this barring out represented a re- 
volt against tyranny ; often it was a conventional, and 
half-acquiesced-in, method of showing exuberance of 
spirit, just before the Christmas holidays. In most of 
the schools the teaching was necessarily of the simplest, 
for the only books might be a Testament, a primer, a 
spelling book, and a small arithmetic. 

At this time one of the recently created Kentucky 
judges, an educated Virginian, in writing to his friend 
Madison, said: "We are as harmonious amongst 



148 The Winning of the West 

ourselves as can be expected of a mixture of people 
from various States and of various Sentiments and 
Manners not yet assimilated. In point of Morals the 
bulk of the inhabitants are far superior to what I ex- 
pected to find in any new settled country. We have 
not had a single instance of Murder, and but one Crim- 
inal for Felony of any kind has yet been before the 
Supreme Court. I wish I could say as much to vindi- 
cate the character of our L^and-jobbers. This Business 
has been attended with much villainy in other parts. 
Here it is reduced to a system, and to take the advan- 
tage of the ignorance or of the poverty of a neighbor is 
almost grown into reputation." 

Of course, when the fever for land speculation raged 
so violently, many who had embarked too eagerly in 
the purchase of large tracts became land poor ; Clark 
being among those who found that though they owned 
great reaches of fertile wild land they had no means 
whatever of getting money. In Kentucky, while 
much land was taken up under Treasury warrants, 
much was also allotted to the ofiicers of the Continental 
army ; and the retired officers of the Continental line 
were the best of all possible immigrants. A class of 
gentlefolks soon sprang up in the land, whose members 
were not so separated from other citizens as to be in 
any way alien to them, and who yet stood sufficiently 
above the mass to be recognized as the natural leaders, 
social and political, of their sturdy fellow- freemen. 
These men by degrees built themselves comfortable, 
roomy houses, and their lives were very pleasant ; at a 
little later period Clark, having abandoned war and 
politics, describes himself as living a retired hfe with, 
as his chief amusements, reading, hunting, fishing, 
fowling, and corresponding with a few chosen friends. 



The Inrush of Settlers 149 

The gentry offered to strangers the usual open-handed 
hospitality characteristic of the frontier, with much 
more than the average frontier refinement ; a hospitality, 
moreover, which was never marred or interfered with 
by the frontier suspiciousness of strangers which some- 
times made the humbler people of the border seem churl- 
ish to travellers. When Federal garrisons were 
established along the Ohio, the officers were largely 
dependent for their social pleasures on the gentlefolks 
of the neighborhood. One of them in his journal men- 
tions being entertained by Clark at "a very elegant 
dinner," a number of gentlemen being present. The 
officers in turn sometimes gave dances in the forts, or 
attended the great barbecues to which the people rode 
from far and near. At such a barbecue an ox or a 
sheep, a bear, an elk, or a deer, was split in two and 
roasted over the coals ; dinner was eaten under the 
trees ; and there was every kind of amusement from 
horse-racing to dancing. 

Besides raising more than enough flour and beef to 
keep themselves in plenty, the settlers turned their at- 
tention to many other forms of produce. There were 
many thriving orchards ; while tobacco cultivation was 
becoming of much importance. Great droves of hogs 
and flocks of sheep flourished in every locality whence 
the bears and wolves had been driven ; the hogs run- 
ning free in the woods with the branded cattle and 
horses. Except in the most densely settled parts much 
of the beef was still obtained from buffaloes, and much 
of the bacon from bears. Venison was a staple com- 
modity. The fur trade, largely carried on by French 
trappers, was still of great importance in Kentucky and 
Tennessee, North of the Ohio it was the attraction 
which tempted white men into the wilderness. Its 



150 The Winning of the West 

profitable nature was the chief reason why the British 
persistently clung to the posts on the Lakes, and 
stirred up the Indians to keep the American settlers 
out of all lands that were tributary to the British fur 
merchants. 

In addition to furs, quantities of ginseng were often 
carried to the eastern settlements at this period, when 
the commerce of the West was in its first infancy, and 
was as yet only struggling for an outlet down the Mis- 
sissippi. One of those who went into this trade was 
Boone. Although no longer a real leader in Kentucky 
life he still occupied quite a prominent position and 
served as a Representative in the Virginia Legislature, 
while his fame as a hunter and explorer was now 
spread abroad in the United States, and even Europe. 
To travellers and new-comers generally, he was always 
pointed out as the first discoverer of Kentucky ; and 
being modest, self-contained, and self-reliant he always 
impressed them favorably. He spent most of his time 
in hunting, trapping, and surveying land warrants for 
men of means, being paid, for instance, two shillings 
current money per acre for all the good land he could 
enter on a ten-thousand acre Treasury warrant. He 
also traded up and down the Ohio River, at various 
places, such as Point Pleasant and Limestone ; and at 
times combined keeping a tavern with keeping a store. 

Boone procured for his customers or for himself such 
articles as linen, cloth, flannel, corduroy, chintz, calico, 
broadcloth, and velvet at prices varying according to 
the quality, from three to thirty shillings a yard ; and 
there was also evidently a ready market for " tea 
ware," knives and forks, scissors, buttons, nails, and 
all kinds of hardware. Furs and skins usually appear 
on the debit sides of the various accounts, ranging in 



The Inrush of Settlers 151 

value from the skin of a beaver worth eighteen shil- 
Hngs, or that of a bear worth ten, to those of deer, 
wolves, coons, wildcats, and foxes, costing two to four 
shillings apiece. Boone procured his goods from mer- 
chants in Hagerstown and Williamsport, in Maryland, 
whither he and his sons guided their own pack-trains, 
laden with peltries and with kegs of ginseng, and 
accompanied by droves of loose horses. 

Boone's creed in matters of morality and religion 
was as simple and straightforward as his own char- 
acter. L,ate in life he wrote to one of his kinsfolk : 
"All the religion I have is to love and fear God, be- 
lieve in Jesus Christ, do all the good to my neighbors 
and myself that I can, and do as little harm as I can 
help, and trust on God's mercy for the rest." The old 
pioneer always kept the respect of red man and white, 
of friend and foe, for he acted according to his belief. 

There was already a strong feeling in the western 
settlements against negro slavery, because of its moral 
evil, and of its inconsistency with all true standards of 
humanity and Christianity, a feeling which continued 
to exist and which later led to resolute efforts to forbid 
or abolish slave-holding. But the consciences of the 
majority were too dull, and, from the standpoint of the 
white race, they were too shortsighted to take action 
in the right direction. The selfishness and mental 
obliquity which imperil the future of a race for the 
sake of the lazy pleasure of two or three generations 
prevailed ; and in consequence the white people of the 
middle West, and therefore eventually of the South- 
west, clutched the one burden under which they ever 
staggered, the one evil which has ever warped their 
development, the one danger which has ever seriously 
threatened their very existence. 



CHAPTER XVII 
the; state of franki,in, 1784-1788 

IN Kentucky the old frontiersmen were losing their 
grip on the governmental machinery of the district. 
The great flood of immigration tended to swamp the 
pioneers ; and the leading parts in the struggle for 
statehood were played by men who had come to the 
country about the close of the Revolutionary War, 
and who were often related by ties of kinship to the 
leaders of the Virginia legislatures and conventions. 

On the waters of the upper Tennessee matters were 
entirely different. Immigration had been slower, and 
the people who did come in were usually of the type 
of those who had first built their stockaded hamlets on 
the banks of the Watauga. The leaders of the early 
pioneers were still the leaders of the community-, in 
legislation as in warfare. Moreover North Carolina 
was a much weaker and more turbulent State than 
Virginia ; it was very poor, and regarded the western 
settlements as mere burdensome sources of expense. 
In short, the settlers were left to themselves, to work 
out their own salvation as best they might, in peace or 
war ; and as they bore most of the burdens of inde- 
pendence, they began to long for the privileges. 

In June, 1784, the State Legislature passed an act 
ceding to the Continental Congress all the western 
lands ; that is, all of what is now Tennessee, It was 

152 



The State of Franklin 153 

provided that the sovereignty of North Carolina over 
the ceded lands should continue in full effect until the 
United States accepted the gift ; and that the act 
should lapse and become void unless Congress accepted 
within two years. 

There was a general feeling in the Holston region 
that some step should be taken forthwith to prevent 
the whole district from lapsing into anarchy. The 
frontiersmen did not believe that Congress, hampered 
as it was and powerless to undertake new responsi- 
bilities, could accept the gift until the two years were 
nearly gone ; and meanwhile North Carolina would in 
all likelihood pay them little heed, so that they would 
be left a prey to the Indians without and to their own 
wrong-doers within. 

The first step taken by the frontiersmen in the 
direction of setting up a new state was the election of 
deputies with full powers to a convention held at 
Jonesboro, Here some forty deputies met on August 
23, 1784, and appointed John Sevier President. The 
delegates were unanimous that the counties represented 
should declare themselves independent of North Caro- 
lina, and passed a resolution to this effect. They also 
resolved that the three counties should form themselves 
into an Association, and should enforce all the laws of 
North Carolina not incompatible with beginning the 
career of a separate state, and that Congress should be 
petitioned to countenance them, and advise them in the 
matter of their constitution. In addition, they made 
provision for admitting to their state the neighboring 
portions of Virginia, should they apply, and should 
the application be sanctioned by the State of Virginia, 
" or other power having cognizance thereof." 

So far the convention had been unanimous ; but a 



154 The Winning of the West 

split came on the question whether their declaration of 
independence should take effect at once. The majority- 
held that it should, and so voted ; while a strong 
minority, amounting to one third of the members, 
followed the lead of John Tipton, and voted in the 
negative. During the session a crowd of people, 
partly from the straggling little frontier village itself, 
but partly from the neighboring country, had assem- 
bled, and were waiting in the street, to learn what the 
convention had decided. A member, stepping to the 
door of the building, announced the birth of the new 
state. The crowd, of course, believed in strong 
measures, and expressed its hearty approval. Soon 
afterwards the convention adjourned, after providing 
for the calling of a new convention, to consist of five 
delegates from each county, who should give a name 
to the state, and prepare for it a constitution. 

When the convention did meet, in November, it 
broke up in confusion. At the same time North Caro- 
lina, becoming alarmed, repealed her cession act ; and 
thereupon Sevier himself counselled his fellow-citizens 
to abandon the movement for a new state. However, 
they felt they had gone too far to back out. The con- 
vention came together again in December, and took 
measures looking towards the assumption of full 
statehood. 

Elections for the Legislature were held, and in March, 
1785, the two houses of the new state of Franklin met, 
and chose Sevier as Governor. Courts were organ- 
ized, and military and civil ofl&cials of every grade were 
provided, those holding commissions under North Caro- 
lina being continued in office in almost all cases. The 
friction caused by the change of government was thus 
minimized. Four new counties were created, taxes 



The State of Franklin 155 

were levied, and a number of laws enacted. One of the 
acts was " for the promotion of learning in the county 
of Washington." Under it the first academy West of 
the mountains was started ; for some years it was the 
only high school anywhere in the neighborhood where 
Latin, or indeed any branch of learning beyond the 
simplest rudiments, was taught. It is no small credit 
to the backwoodsmen that in this their first attempt at 
state-making they should have done what they could 
to furnish their sons the opportunity of obtaining a 
higher education. 

One of the serious problems with which they had to 
grapple was the money question. All through the 
United States the finances were in utter disorder ; so 
this backwoods I^egislature legalized the payment of 
taxes and salaries in kind, and set a standard of values. 
The dollar was declared equal to six shillings, and a 
scale of prices was established. Among the articles 
which were enumerated as being lawfully payable for 
taxes were bacon at six pence a pound, rye whiskey at 
two shillings and sixpence a gallon, peach or apple 
brandy at three shillings per gallon, and country-made 
sugar at one shilling per pound. Skins, however, 
formed the ordinary currency ; otter, beaver, and deer 
being worth six shillings apiece, and raccoon and fox 
one shilling and three pence. The Governor's salary 
was set at two hundred pounds, and that of the highest 
judge at one hundred and fifty. 

The new Governor sent a formal communication to 
Governor Alexander Martin of North Carolina, an- 
nouncing that the three counties beyond the mountains 
had declared their independence, and erected themselves 
into a separate state, and setting forth their reasons 
for the step. Governor Martin answered Sevier in a 



156 The Winning of the West 

public letter, in which he went over his arguments one 
by one, and sought to refute them. He announced the 
willingness of the parent State to accede to the separa- 
tion when the proper time came ; but he pointed out 
that North Carolina could not consent to such irregular 
and unauthorized separation, and that Congress would 
certainly not countenance it against her wishes. 

At the same time, in the early spring of 1785, the 
authorities of the new state sent a memorial to the Con- 
tinental Congress. The memorial set forth the earnest 
desire of the people of Franklin to be admitted as a State 
of the Federal Union, together with the wrongs they 
had endured from North Carolina, dwelling with par- 
ticular bitterness upon the harm which had resulted 
from her failure to give the Cherokees the goods which 
they had been promised. It further recited how North 
Carolina's original cession of the western lands had 
moved the Westerners to declare their independence, 
and contended that her subsequent repeal of the act 
making this cession was void, and that Congress should 
treat the cession as an accomplished fact. However, 
Congress took no action either for or against the insur- 
rectionary commonwealth. 

At the outset of its stormy career the new state had 
been named Franklin, in honor of Benjamin Franklin ; 
but a large minority had wished to call it Frankland in- 
stead, and outsiders knew it as often by one title as the 
other. Benjamin Franklin himself did not know that 
it was named after him until it had been in existence 
eighteen months. The state was then in straits, and 
Franklin was appealed to in the hope of some advice or 
assistance. The prudent philosopher replied that this 
was the first time he had been informed that the new 
state was named after him, he having always supposed 



The State of Franklin 157 

that it was called Frankland. He expressed his high 
appreciation of the honor conferred upon him, and his 
regret that he could not show his appreciation by any- 
thing more substantial than good wishes. He declined 
to commit himself as to the quarrel between Franklin 
and North Carolina, explaining that he could know 
nothing of its merits, as he had but just come home 
from abroad ; but he warmly commended the proposi- 
tion to submit the question to Congress, and urged that 
the disputants should abide by its decision. 

In November, 1785, the convention to provide a per- 
manent constitution for the state met at Greenville. 
There was already much discontent with the Franklin 
government. The differences between its adherents 
and those of the old North Carolina government were 
accentuated by bitter faction fights among the rivals for 
popular leadership, backed by their families and fol- 
lowers, the rivalry between Sevier and Tipton being 
pronounced, for Tipton was second in influence only to 
Sevier, and was his bitter personal enemy. At the 
convention a brand new constitution was submitted, 
and was urged for adoption by a strong minority. 
After a hot debate and some tumultuous scenes, it was 
rejected by the majority of the convention, and in its 
stead, on Sevier's motion, the North Carolina consti- 
tution was adopted as the ground work for the new 
government. 

The state of Franklin had now been in existence 
over a year, and during this period the officers holding 
under it had exercised complete control in the three 
counties. But in the spring of 1786 the discontent 
which had smouldered burst into flame. Tipton and 
his followers openly espoused the cause of North Caro- 
lina, and were joined, as time waned, by the men who 



158 The Winning of the West 

for various reasons were dissatisfied with the results of 
the trial of independent statehood. They held elections, 
at the Sycamore Shoals and elsewhere, to choose repre- 
sentatives to the North Carolina I^egislature, John 
Tipton being elected Senator. They organized the 
entire local government over again in the interest of 
the old State. 

The two rival governments clashed in every way. 
County courts of both were held in the same counties ; 
the militia were called out by both sets of officers ; 
taxes were levied by both Legislatures. The Franklin 
courts were held at Jonesboro, the North Carolina 
courts at Buff"alo, ten miles distant ; and each court in 
turn was broken up by armed bands of the opposite 
party. Criminals throve in the confusion, and the peo- 
ple refused to pay taxes to either party. Brawls, with 
their brutal accompaniments of gouging and biting, 
were common. Sevier and Tipton themselves, on one 
occasion when they by chance met, indulged in a rough- 
and-tumble fight before their friends could interfere. 

During this time of confusion each party rallied by 
turns, but the general drift was all in favor of North 
Carolina. One by one the adherents of Franklin dropped 
away. The revolt was essentially a frontier revolt, and 
Sevier was essentially a frontier leader. The older and 
longer-settled counties and parts of counties were the 
first to fall away from him, while the settlers on the very 
edge of the Indian country clung to him to the last. 

In 1787 the state of Franklin began to totter to its 
fall. In April Sevier, hungering for help or friendly 
advice, wrote again to Franklin. The old sage repeated 
that he knew too little of the circumstances to express 
an opinion, but he urged a friendly understanding with 
North Carolina, and he spoke with unpalatable frank- 



The State of Franklin 159 

ness on the subject of the Indians. Prevent encroach- 
ments on Indian lands, Franklin wrote to Sevier, — 
Sevier, who, in a last effort to rally his followers, was 
seeking a general Indian war to further these very en- 
croachments, — and remember that they are the more 
unj ustifiable because the Indians usually give good bar- 
gains in the way of purchase, while a war with them 
costs more than any possible price they may ask. 

Sevier, also in the year 1787, carried on a long cor- 
respondence with Evan Shelby, whose adherence to the 
state of Franklin he much desired, as the stout old fel- 
low was a power not only among the frontiersmen but 
with the Virginian and North Carolinian authorities 
likewise. Sevier persuaded the Legislature to offer 
Shelby the position of chief magistrate of Franklin, 
and pressed him to accept it, and throw in his lot with 
the Westerners, instead of trying to serve men at a 
distance. 

But Shelby could neither be placated nor intimidated. 
He regarded with equal alarm and anger the loosening 
of the bands of authority and order among the Frank- 
lin frontiersmen. He bitterly disapproved of their law- 
less encroachments on the Indian lands, which he 
feared would cause a general war with the savages. 
At the very time that Sevier was writing to him, he 
was himself writing to the North Carolina government, 
urging them to send forward troops to put down the 
rebellion by force, and was requesting the Virginians 
to back up any such movement with their militia. 
However, no action was necessary. The Franklin 
government collapsed of itself, for in September, 1787, 
the Legislature met for the last time, at Greenville. 

Sevier was left in dire straits by the falling of the 
state he had founded ; for not only were the North 



i6o The Winning of the West 

Carolina authorities naturally bitter against him, but 
he had to count on the personal hostility of Tipton. 
About the time that his term as Governor expired, a 
writ, issued by the North Carolina courts, was ex- 
ecuted against his estate. The sheriff seized all his 
negro slaves, as they worked on his Nolichucky farm, 
and bore them for safe-keeping to Tipton's house, 
Sevier raised a hundred and fift}^ men and marched to 
take them back, carrying a light fieldpiece. Tipton's 
friends gathered, thirty or forty strong, and a siege be- 
gan. Sevier hesitated to push matters to extremity by 
charging home. For a couple of days there was some 
skirmishing and two or three men were killed or 
wounded. Then the county-lieutenant, with a hun- 
dred and eighty militia, came to Tipton's rescue. They 
surprised Sevier's camp at dawn on the last day of Feb- 
ruary, while the snow was falling heavily ; and the 
Franklin men fled in panic, one or two being slain. 
Two of Sevier's sons were taken prisoners, and Tipton 
was with difficulty dissuaded from hanging them. 
This scrambling fight marked the ignoble end of the 
state of Franklin. Sevier fled to the uttermost part of 
the frontier, where no writs ran, and speedily became 
engaged in the Indian war. 

A frontier leader and Indian fighter of note, Joseph 
Martin by name, who had dwelt much among the 
Indians, and had great influence over them, as he al- 
ways treated them justly, had been appointed by North 
Carolina Brigadier-General of the "Western counties ly- 
ing beyond the mountains. Martin's duties were not 
only to protect the border against Indian raids, but 
also to stamp out any smouldering embers of insurrec- 
tion, and see that the laws of the State were again put 
in operation. 



The State of Franklin i6i 

In April, 1788, he took command, and on the 24th 
of the month reached the lower settlements on the Hol- 
ston River. Here he found that a couple of settlers 
had been killed by Indians a few days before, and he 
met a party of riflemen who had gathered to avenge 
the death of their friends by a foray on the Cherokee 
towns. Martin did not believe that the Cherokees were 
responsible for the murder, and he persuaded the angry 
whites to choose four of their trusted men to accompany 
him as ambassadors to the Cherokee towns in order to 
find out the truth. 

Accordingly they all went forward together. Mar- 
tin sent runners ahead to the Cherokees, and their 
chiefs and young warriors gathered to meet him. The 
Indians assured him that they were guiltless of the re- 
cent murder ; that it should doubtless be laid at the 
door of some Creek war party. The Creeks, they said, 
kept passing through their villages to war on the 
whites, and they had often turned them back. The 
frontier envoys at this professed themselves satisfied, 
and returned to their homes, after begging Martin to 
stay among the Cherokees ; and he stayed, his presence 
giving confidence to the Indians, who forthwith began 
to plant their crops. 

Unfortunately, about the middle of May, the mur- 
ders again began, and again parties of riflemen gath- 
ered for vengeance. Martin intercepted one of them 
ten miles from a friendly Cherokee town ; but another 
attacked and burned a neighboring town, the inhabi- 
tants escaping with slight loss. The Cherokees, being 
incensed at the attack, threatened Martin at first. Af- 
ter awhile they cooled down, and explained to him 
that the outrages were the work of the Creeks and 
Chickamaugas, whom they could not control, and 



1 62 The Winning" of the West 



£> 



whom they hoped the whites would punish ; but that 
they themselves were innocent and friendly. Then 
the whites sent messages to express their regret ; and 
though Martin declined longer to be responsible for the 
deeds of men of his own color, the Indians consented 
to patch up another truce. 

The outrages, however, continued ; among others, a 
big boat was captured by the Chickamaugas, and all 
but three of the forty persons on board were killed. 
The settlers drew no fine distinctions between different 
Indians ; they knew that their friends were being mur- 
dered by savages who came from the direction of the 
Cherokee towns ; and they vented their wrath on the 
Indians who dwelt in these towns because they were 
nearest to hand. 

On May 24th Martin left the Indian town of Chota, 
where he had been staying, and rode to the French 
Broad. There he found that a big le\^ of frontier 
militia, with Sevier at their head, were preparing to 
march against the Indians. Sevier, heedless of Mar- 
tin's remonstrances, hurried forward on his raid, with 
a hundred riders. He destroyed a town on the Hia- 
wassee, killing a number of the warriors. This feat, 
and two or three others like it, made the frontiersmen 
flock to his standard ; but before any great number 
were embodied under him, he headed a small party on 
a raid against a small town of Cherokees, who were 
well known to have been friendly to the whites. Here 
dwelt several chiefs, including old Corn Tassel, who 
for years had been foremost in the endeavor to keep the 
peace, and to prevent raids on the settlers. They put 
out a white flag ; and the whites then hoisted one 
themselves. On the strength of this, one of the In- 
dians crossed the river and ferried the whites over. 



The State of Franklin 163 

Sevier put the Indians in a hut, and then a horrible 
deed of infamy was perpetrated ; for he allowed these 
Cherokee chiefs to be brained with the tomahawk. 
Sevier's friends asserted that at the moment he was ab- 
sent ; but he knew well the fierce blood lust of his fol- 
lowers, and it was criminal negligence on his part to 
leave to their mercy the friendly Indians who had 
trusted to his good faith ; and, moreover, he made no 
effort to punish the murder. 

Even on the frontier, and at that time, the better 
class of backwoodsmen expressed much horror at the 
murder of the friendly chiefs. Sevier had planned to 
march against the Chickamaugas with the levies that 
were thronging to his banner ; but the news of the 
murder provoked such discussion and hesitation that 
his forces melted away. Elsewhere throughout the 
country the news excited great indignation. The Con- 
tinental Congress passed resolutions condemning acts 
which thej' had been powerless to prevent and were 
powerless to punish, and the Governor of North Caro- 
lina, as soon as he heard the news, ordered the arrest 
of Sevier and his associates. 

As long as " Nolichucky Jack" remained on the 
border, among the rough Indian fighters whom he had 
so often led to victory, he was in no danger. But in 
the fall, late in October, he ventured back to the longer- 
settled districts. A council of officers, with Martin 
presiding and Tipton present as one of the leading mem- 
bers, had been held at Jonesboro, and had just broken 
up when Sevier and a dozen of his followers rode into 
the squalid little town. After much drinking and 
carousing, they all rode away ; but when some miles 
out of town Sevier got into a quarrel, and after more 
drinking and brawling he went to pass the night at a 



164 Tlio Winninv; of the West 

house, the owner otwhioh ^Y.ls his t'rieud. Mcatuvhile 
one of the men with whom he had quarrelled infonneii 
Tipton that his foe was in his gjasp. Tipton gathereil 
eight or ten men. and early next moniing surpriseil 
Sevier in his lodgings. 

Tipton capturei.1 Sevier, put him in irons, and sent 
him across the mountains to Morgantown. in North 
Carolina, where he was kindly treated and allowed 
much liberty. Meanwhile a dozen of his friends, with 
his two sons at their head, crossed the mountains to 
rescue their beloved leader. They came into Morgan- 
town while cv>urt was sitting and went unnotice^l in 
the crowds. In the e\*eniug. when the court adjourned 
and the crowds broke up, Sevier's friends managed to 
get near him with a spare horse : he mountevl and they 
all rode off at speed. By daybreak they were out of 
danger. Nothing further was attempted against him. 
A year later he was elected a member of the North 
Carolina Legislature : after some hesitation he was al- 
lowed to take his seat, and the last trace of the old 
hostility disiipi">eared. 

The year before this. Congress had been much 
worked up over the discovery of a supposed movement 
in Franklin to organize for the armed conquest of 
'I.onisiana. The Secretar>' of War at once directed 
General Harmar to interfere, by force if necess;^ry. with 
the execution of any such plan, and an officer of the 
regular anny was sent to Franklin to find out the truth 
of the matter. This otTicer visited the Holston country,- 
in April, 1788, and af\er careful inquir>- came to the 
conclusion that no movement against Spain was con- 
templated ; the settlers Ixnng al->sorl>eii in the strife 
lv?tween the followers of Sevier and of Tipton. 

The real danger for the moment lav, not in a move- 



The State of Franklin 165 

ment by the backwoodsmen against Spain, but in a 
conspiracy of some o{ the backwoods leaders with the 
Spanish authorities. Just at this time the unrest in 
the West had taken the form, not of attempting the cap- 
ture of Louisiana by force, but of obtaining concessions 
from the Spaniards in return for favors to be rendered 
them. 

Sevier was in a mood to be helped and felt that 
with outside assistance he could yet win the day. But 
when nothing came of his proposals, he suddenly be- 
came a Federalist and an advocate of a strong Central 
government ; and this, doubtless, not because of love 
for Federalism, but to show his hostility to North Caro- 
lina, which had at first refused to enter the new ITnion. 
Thus the last spark of independent life tlickered out in 
Franklin proper. 



CHAPTER XVIII 

KENTUCKY'S STRUGGIvE FOR STATEHOOD 
1784-179O 

WHILE the social couditiou of the communities 
on the Cumberland and the Tennessee had 
changed very slowly, in Kentucky the changes had 
been rapid. For when Col. William Fleming, an un- 
usually competent observer, visited Kentucky on sur- 
veying business in the winter of 1779-80, he was much 
struck by the misery of the settlers. At the Falls they 
were sickly, suffering with fever and ague ; many of 
the children were dying. Boonsboro and Harrodsburg 
were very dirty, the inhabitants were sickly, and the 
offal and dead beasts lay about, poisoning the air and 
the water. During the winter no more corn could be 
procured than was enough to furnish an occasional 
hoe-cake. The people sickened on a steady diet of 
buffalo-bull beef, cured in smoke without salt, and pre- 
pared for the table by boiling. There were then, 
Fleming estimated, about three thousand people in 
Kentucky. 

But half a dozen years later all this was changed. 
The settlers had fairly swarmed into the Kentucky 
country, and the population was so dense that the true 
frontiersmen, the real pioneers, were already wander- 
ing off to Illinois and elsewhere ; every man of them 
desiring to live on his own land, by his own labor, and 

166 



Kentucky's Struggle for Statehood 167 

scorning to work for wages. The unexampled growth 
had wrought many changes ; not the least was the way 
in which it lessened the importance of the first hunter- 
settlers and hunter-soldiers. 

In all new-settled regions in the United States, so 
long as there was a frontier at all, the changes in the 
pioneer population proceeded in a certain definite order, 
and Kentuck)^ furnished an example of the process. 
The hunter or trapper came first. Sometimes he com- 
bined with hunting and trapping the functions of an 
Indian trader, but ordinarily the American, as distin- 
guished from the French or Spanish frontiersman, 
treated the Indian trade as something purely secondary 
to his more regular pursuits. Boone was a type of this 
class, and Boone's descendants went westward genera- 
tion by generation until they reached the Pacific. 

Close behind the mere hunter came the rude hunter- 
settler. He pastured his stock on the wild range, and 
lived largely by his skill with the rifle. He worked 
with simple tools and he did his work roughly. His 
squalid cabin was destitute of the commonest comforts ; 
the blackened stumps and dead, girdled trees stood 
thick in his small and badly tilled field. He was ad- 
venturous, restless, shiftless, and he felt ill at ease and 
cramped by the presence of more industrious neighbors. 
As they pressed in round about him, he would sell his 
claim, gather his cattle and his scanty store of tools and 
household goods, and again wander forth to seek 
uncleared land. 

The third class consisted of the men who were thrifty, 
as well as adventurous, the men who were even more 
industrious than restless. These w^ere they who entered 
in to hold the land, and who handed it on as an inherit- 
ance to their children and their children's children. 



i68 The Winning of the Wesr 

They wished to find good land on which to build, and 
plant, and raise their big families of healthy children, and 
when they found such land they wished to make thereon 
their permanent homes. Though they first built cabins, 
as soon as might be they replaced them with substan- 
tial houses and barns. Though they at first girdled 
and burnt the standing timber, to clear the land, later 
they tilled it as carefully as any farmer of the seaboard 
States. They composed the bulk of the population, 
and formed the backbone and body of the State. 

Yet a fourth class was composed of the men of means, 
of the well-to-do planters, merchants, and lawyers, of 
the men whose families already stood high on the 
Atlantic slope. Their inheritance of sturdy and self- 
reliant manhood helped them greatly ; their blood told 
in their favor as blood generally does tell when other 
things are equal. If they prized intellect they prized 
character more ; they were strong in body and mind, 
stout of heart, and resolute of will. They felt that 
pride of race which spurs a man to efibrt, instead of 
making him feel that he is excused from effort. They 
realized that the qualities they inherited from their 
forefathers ought to be further developed by them as 
their forefathers had originally developed them. They 
knew that their blood and breeding, though making it 
probable that they would with proper effort succeed, 
yet entitled them to no success which they could not 
fairly earn in open contest with their rivals. 

In spite of all the eflForts of the Spanish officials the 
volume of trade on the Mississippi grew steadily. The 
fact that the river commerce throve was partly the cause 
and partly the consequence of the general prosperity of 
Kentucky. The pioneer days, with their fierce and 
squalid struggle for bare life, were over. If men were 



Kentucky's Struggle for Statehood 169 

willing to work, they were sure to succeed in earning a 
comfortable livelihood in a country so rich. lyike all 
other successful and masterful people the Kentuckians 
showed by their actions their practical knowledge of 
the truth that no race can ever hold its own unless its 
members are able and willing to work hard with their 
hands. 

The general prosperity meant rude comfort every- 
where ; and it meant a good deal more than rude com- 
fort for the men of greatest ability. By the time the 
river commerce had become really considerable, the 
rich merchants, planters, and lawyers had begun to 
build two-story houses of brick or stone, like those in 
which they had lived in Virginia. They were very 
fond of fishing, shooting, and riding, and were lavishly 
hospitable. They sought to have their children well 
taught, not only in letters but in social accomplish- 
ments, like dancing ; and at the proper season they 
liked to visit the Virginian watering-places, where they 
met " genteel companj^ " from the older States, and 
lodged in good taverns in which " a man could have a 
room and a bed to himself." 

One man, who would naturally have played a pro- 
minent part in Kentucky politics, failed to do so from 
a variety of causes. This was George Rogers Clark. 
He was by preference a military rather than a civil 
leader ; he belonged by choice and habit to the class of 
pioneers and Indian fighters whose influence was wan- 
ing ; his remarkable successes had excited much envy 
and jealousy, while his subsequent failure had aroused 
contempt. He drew himself to one side, though he 
chafed at the need, and in his private letters he spoke 
with bitterness of the " big little men," the ambitious 
nobodies, whose jealousy had prompted them to destroy 



170 The Winning of the West 

him by ten thousand Hes ; and, making a virtue of ne- 
cessity, he plumed himself on the fact that he did not 
meddle with politics. 

Benjamin I,ogan, who was senior colonel and county- 
lieutenant of the District of Kentucky, stood second to 
Clark in the estimation of the early settlers, the men 
who, riding their own horses and carrying their own 
rifles, had so often followed both commanders on their 
swift raids against the Indian towns. Logan naturally 
took the lead in the first serious movement to make 
Kentucky an independent State. 

In 1784 fear of a formidable Indian invasion became 
general in Kentucky, and in the fall Logan summoned 
a meeting of the field officers to discuss the danger and 
to provide against it. When the officers gathered and 
tried to evolve some plan of operations, they found that 
they were helpless. They were merely the officers of 
one of the districts of Virginia ; they could take no 
proper steps of their own motion, and Virginia was too 
far away and her interests had too little in common 
with theirs for the Virginian authorities to prove satis- 
factory substitutes for their own. No officials in Ken- 
tucky were authorized to order an expedition against 
the Indians, or to pay the militia who took part in it. 
Any expedition of the kind had to be wholly voluntary, 
and could of course only be undertaken under the 
strain of a great emergency. Confronted by such a con- 
dition of affairs, the militia officers issued a circular- 
letter to the people of the district, recommending that 
on December 24, 1784, a convention should be held at 
Danville further to consider the subject, and that this 
convention should consist of delegates elected one from 
each militia company. 

The recommendation was well received by the people 



Kentucky's Struggle for Statehood 171 

of the district ; and on the appointed date the convention 
met at Danville. Col. William Fleming, the old Indian 
fighter and surveyor, was again visiting Kentucky, and 
he was chosen President of the convention. After some 
discussion the members concluded that, while some of 
the disadvantages under which they labored could be 
remedied by the action of the Virginia lyCgislature, the 
real trouble was deep rooted, and could only be met by 
separation from Virginia and the erection of Kentucky 
into a State. There was, however, much opposition to 
this plan, and the convention wisely decided to dissolve, 
after recommending to the people to elect, b}' counties, 
members who should meet in convention at Danville in 
May for the express purpose of deciding on the ques- 
tion of addressing to the Virginia Assembly a request 
for separation. 

The convention, which met at Danville, in May, 
1785, decided unanimously that it was desirable to 
separate, by constitutional methods, from Virginia, 
and to secure admission as a separate State into the 
Federal Union. Accordingly, it directed the prepara- 
tion of a petition to this effect, to be sent to the Virginia 
Legislature, and prepared an address to the people in 
favor of the proposed course of action. Then instead 
of acting on its own responsibilit)^ as it had both the 
right and power to do, the convention decided that the 
issuing of the address, and the ratification of its own 
actions generally, should be submitted to another con- 
vention, which was summoned to meet at the same 
place in August of the same year. 

In the August convention James Wilkinson sat as a 
member, and he succeeded in committing his colleagues 
to a more radical course of action than that of the pre- 
ceding convention. The resolutions they forwarded 



172 The Winning of the West 

to the Virginia I^egislature, asked the immediate erec- 
tion of Kentucky into an independent State, and ex- 
pressed the conviction that the new commonwealth 
would undoubtedly be admitted into the Union. This, 
of course, meant that Kentucky would first become a 
power outside and independent of the Union ; and no 
provision was made for entry into the Union beyond 
the expression of a hopeful belief that it would be 
allowed. 

But when Virginia, with great propriety, made the 
acquiescence of Congress a condition precedent for the 
formation of the new State, Wilkinson immediately 
denounced this condition and demanded that Kentucky 
declare herself an independent State forthwith, no mat- 
ter what Congress or Virginia might say. All the 
disorderly, unthinking, and separatist elements fol- 
lowed his lead. But the most enlightened and far-see- 
ing men of the district were alarmed at the outlook ; 
and a vigorous campaign in favor of orderly action was 
begun, under the lead of men like the Marshalls. 
These men were themselves uncompromisingly in 
favor of statehood for Kentucky ; but they insisted that 
it should come in an orderly way, and not by a silly 
and needless revolution, which could serve no good 
purpose and was certain to entail much disorder and 
suffering upon the community. They insisted, further- 
more, that there should be no room for doubt in regard 
to the new State's entering the Union. 

When the time (September, 1787) came for holding 
the new convention that had been ordered by Virginia, 
Clark and Logan were making their raids against the 
Shawnees and the Wabash Indians. So many mem- 
bers-elect were absent in command of their respective 
militia companies that the convention merely met to 



Kentucky's Struggle for Statehood 173 

adjourn, no quorum to transact business being ob- 
tained until January, 1787. The convention then sent 
to the Virginia IvCgislature explaining the reason for 
the delay, and requesting that the terms of the act of 
separation already passed should be changed to suit 
the new conditions. 

Virginia had so far acted wisely ; but now her Legis- 
lature passed a new act, providing for another conven- 
tion, to be held in August, 1787, the separation from 
Virginia only to be consummated if Congress, prior to 
July 4, 1788, should agree to the erection of the State 
and provide for its admission to the Union. When 
news of this act, with its requirement of needless and 
tedious delay, reached the Kentucky convention, it 
adjourned for good, with much chagrin, 

Wilkinson and the other separatist leaders took ad- 
vantage of this very natural chagrin to inflame the 
minds of the people against both Virginia and Con- 
gress. It was at this time that the Westerners became 
deeply stirred by exaggerated reports of the willingness 
of Congress to jdeld the right to navigate the Missis- 
sippi ; and the separatist chiefs fanned their discontent 
by painting the danger as real and imminent, although 
they must speedily have learned that it had already 
ceased to exist. 

However, at this time Wilkinson started on his first 
trading voyage to New Orleans, and the district was 
freed from his very undesirable presence. He was the 
mainspring of the movement in favor of lawless separ- 
ation ; for the furtive, restless, unscrupulous man had 
a talent for intrigue which rendered him dangerous at 
a crisis of such a kind. In his absence the feeling 
cooled. The convention met in September, 1787, and 
acted with order and propriety, passing an act which 



174 The Winning of the West 

provided for statehood upon the terms and conditions 
laid down by Virginia. Both Virginia and the Conti- 
nental Congress were notified of the action taken. 

With Wilkinson's return to Kentucky, after his suc- 
cessful trading trip to New Orleans and fresh from 
plotting with the Spanish officials, the disunion agita- 
tion once more took formidable form. The news of his 
success excited the cupidity of every mercantile adven- 
turer, and the whole district became inflamed with de- 
sire to reap the benefits of the rich river-trade ; and 
naturally the people formed the most exaggerated esti- 
mate of what these benefits would be. Chafing at the 
way the restrictions imposed by the Spanish officials 
hampered their commerce, the people were readily led 
by Wilkinson and his associates to consider the Federal 
authorities as somehow to blame because these restric- 
tions were not removed. 

The discontent was much increased by the growing 
fury of the Indian ravages. There had been a lull in 
the murderous woodland warfare during the years im- 
mediately succeeding the close of the Revolution, but 
the storm had again gathered. The hostility of the 
savages had grown steadily. By the summer of 1787 
the Kentucky frontier was suffering much. In their 
anger the Kentuckians denounced the Federal Govern- 
ment for not aiding them, the men who were loudest in 
their denunciations being the very men who were most 
strenuously bent on refusing to adopt the new Consti- 
tution, which alone could give the National Govern- 
ment the power to act effectually in the interest of the 
people. 

While the spirit of unrest and discontent was high, 
the question of ratifying or rejecting this new Federal 
Constitution came up for decision. The Wilkinson 



Kentucky's Struggle for Statehood 175 

party, and all the men who believed in a weak central 
government, or who wished the Federal tie dissolved 
outright, were, of course, violently opposed to ratifica- 
tion. Many weak or short-sighted men, and the doc- 
trinaires and theorists — most of the members of the 
Danville political club, for instance — announced that 
they wished to ratify the Constitution, but only after it 
had been amended. As such prior amendment was 
impossible, this amounted merely to playing into the 
hands of the separatists ; and the men who followed it 
were responsible for the by no means creditable fact 
that most of the Kentucky members in the Virginia 
convention voted against ratification. 

Another irritating delay in the march toward state- 
hood now occurred. In June, 1788, the Continental 
Congress declared that it was expedient to erect Ken- 
tucky into a State. But immediately afterwards news 
came that the Constitution had been ratified by the 
necessary nine States, and that the new government 
was, therefore, practically in being. This meant the 
dissolution of the old Confederation, and Congress 
thereupon very wisely refused to act further in the mat- 
ter. Unfortunately Brown, who was the Kentucky 
delegate in Congress, was one of the separatist leaders. 
He wrote home an account of the matter, in which he 
painted the refusal as due to the jealousy felt by the 
East for the West. As a matter of fact the delegates 
from all the States, except Virginia, had concurred in 
the action taken. Brown suppressed this fact, and 
used language carefully calculated to render the Ken- 
tuckians hostile to the Union. 

Naturally all this gave an impetus to the separatist 
movement. The district held two conventions, in July 
and again in November, during the year 1788 ; and in 



176 The Winning of the West 

both of them the separatist leaders made determined 
efforts to have Kentucky forthwith erect herself into an 
independent State. In uttering their opinions and de- 
sires they used vague language as to what they would 
do when once separated from Virginia. 

It was in connection with these conventions that 
there appeared in August, 1787, the first newspaper ever 
printed in this new West, the West which lay no longer 
among the Alleghanies, but beyond them. It was a 
small weekly sheet called the Kentucke Gazette, the 
editor and publisher of which was John Bradford, who 
brought his printing press down the river on a flatboat ; 
and some of the type were cut out of dogwood. In 
politics the paper sided with the separatists and clamored 
for revolutionary action by Kentucky. 

The purpose of the extreme separatist to keep Ken- 
tucky out of the Union was defeated by the action of 
the fall convention of 1788, which settled definitely that 
Kentucky should become a State of the Union. All that 
remained was to decide on the precise terms of the sep- 
aration from Virginia. There was at first a hitch over 
these, the Virginia Legislature making terms to which 
the district convention of 1789 would not consent ; but 
Virginia then yielded the points in dispute, and the Ken- 
tucky convention of 1790 provided for the admission of 
the State to the Union in 1792, and for holding a consti- 
tutional convention to decide upon the form of govern- 
ment, just before the admission. 



CHAPTER XIX 

THS NORTHWKST TERRITORY ; OHIO 
1787-179O 

AT the close of the Revolutionary War there existed 
wide diflferences between the various States as to 
the actual ownership and possession of the lands they 
claimed beyond the mountains. Virginia and North 
Carolina were the only two who had reduced to some 
kind of occupation a large part of the territory to which 
they asserted title. Their backwoodsmen had settled 
in the lands so that they already held a certain popula- 
tion. Moreover, these same backwoodsmen, organized 
as part of the militia of the parent States, had made 
good their claim by successful warfare. The laws of 
the two States were executed by State officials in com- 
munities scattered over much of the country claimed. 
The soldier-settlers of Virginia and North Carolina had 
actually built houses and forts, tilled the soil, and ex- 
ercised the functions of civil government, on the banks 
of the Wabash and the Ohio, the Mississippi, the 
Cumberland, and the Tennessee. Counties and districts 
had been erected by the two States on the western 
waters ; and representatives of the civil divisions thus 
constituted sat in the State I,egislatures. The claims 
of Virginia and North Carolina to much of the terri- 
tory had behind them the substantial element of armed 
possession. 

177 



178 The Winning of the West 

Nothing of the sort could be said for the claims of the 
other States, for actual possession was not part of them. 
All the States that did not claim lands beyond the 
mountains were strenuous in belittling the claims of 
those that did, and insisted that the title to the western 
territory should be vested in the Union. Not even the 
danger from the British armies could keep this question 
in abeyance, and while the war was at its height the 
States were engaged in bitter wrangles over the subject. 
Maryland was the first to take action in the direction 
of nationalizing the western lands, and was the most 
determined in pressing the matter to a successful issue. 
She showed the greatest hesitation in joining the Con- 
federation at all while the matter was allowed to rest 
unsettled ; and insisted that the titles of the claimant 
States were void, that there was no need of asking them 
to cede what they did not possess, and that the West 
should be declared outright to be part of the Federal 
domain. 

Mar3dand dreaded the mere growth of Virginia in 
wealth, power, and population in the first place ; and 
in the second she feared lest her own population might 
be drained into these vacant lands, thereby at once 
diminishing her own, and building up her neighbor's, 
importance. Each State, at that time, had to look 
upon its neighbors as probable commercial rivals and 
possible armed enemies — a feeling which we now find 
diflSculty in understanding. 

New York's claim was the least defensible of all ; 
but, on the other hand, New York led the way, in 1780, 
by abandoning all her claim to western lands in favor 
of the Union. Congress using this surrender as an 
argument by which to move the other States to action, 
issued an earnest appeal to them to follow New York's 



The Northwest Territory; Ohio 179 

example without regard to the value of their titles, so 
that the Federal Union might be put on a firm basis ; 
and announced that the policy of the Government would 
be to divide this new territory into districts of suitable 
size, which should be admitted as States as soon as they 
became well settled. This last proposition was import- 
ant, as it outlined the future policy of the Government, 
which was to admit the new communities as States, 
with all the rights of the old States, instead of treating 
them as subordinate and dependent, after the manner 
of the Kuropean colonial systems. 

Not until then did Maryland join the Confederation ; 
but for some time no progress was made in the negoti- 
ations with the other States. Finally, early in 1784, 
Virginia ceded to Congress her rights to the territory 
northwest of the Ohio, except a certain amount retained 
as a military reserve for the use of her soldiers, while 
Congress tacitl)' agreed not to question her right to 
Kentucky. A year later Massachusetts followed suit, 
and ceded to Congress her title to all lands lying west 
of the present western boundary of New York State. 
Finally, in 1786, a similar cession was made by Con- 
necticut conditionally upon being allowed to reserve 
for her own profit about five thousand square miles in 
what is now northern Ohio — a tract afterwards known 
as the Western Reserve, 

Thus the project for which Maryland had contended 
was at last realized, with the difference that Congress 
accepted the Northwest as a gift coupled with condi- 
tions, instead of taking it as an unconditional right. 
Having got possession of the land, Congress proceeded 
to arrange for its disposition, regarding the territory as 
a Treasury chest, and was anxious to sell the land in 
lots, whether to individuals or to companies. In 1785 



i8o The Winning of the West 

it passed an ordinance of singular wisdom, which has 
been the basis of all our subsequent legislation on the 
subject. Congress provided for a corps of government 
surveyors, who were to go about their work systematic- 
ally. It provided further for a known base line, and 
then for division of the country into ranges of town- 
ships six miles square, and for the subdivision of these 
townships into lots ( " sections ") of one square mile — 
six hundred and forty acres — each. The ranges, town- 
ships, and sections were duly numbered. The basis for 
the whole system of public education in the Northwest 
was laid by providing that in every township lot No. 
i6 should be reserved for the maintenance of public 
schools therein. A minimum price of a dollar an acre 
was put on the land. 

Congress, however, was disappointed in its hope to 
find in these western lands a source of great wealth. 
The task of subduing the wilderness is not very remun- 
erative. It yields a little more than a livelihood to men 
of energy, resolution, and bodily strength ; but it does 
not yield enough for men to be able to pay heavily for 
the privilege of undertaking the labor. Throughout 
our history the pioneer has found that by taking up 
wild land at a low cost he can make a rough living, and 
keep his family fed, clothed, and housed ; but it is only 
by very hard work that he can lay anything by, or 
materially better his condition. Under such conditions 
a high price cannot be obtained for public lands ; and 
when they are sold, as they must be, at a low price, the 
receipts do little more than offset the necessary outlay. 
The truth is that people have a very misty idea as to 
the worth of wild lands. All their value arises from 
the labor done on them or in their neighborhood, 
together with the amount of labor which must 



The Northwest Territory; Ohio i8i 

necessarily be expended in transportation. Such lands 
aflford an opportunity of which advantage can be taken 
only at the cost of much hardship and much grinding 
toil. 

It remained for Congress to determine the conditions 
under which the settlers could enter the new land, and 
under which new States should spring up therein. 
The movement in this direction was successful, because, 
when it was made, it was pushed by a body of well- 
known men who were anxious to buy the lands that 
Congress was anxious to sell, but who would not buy 
them until they had some assurance that the govern- 
mental system under which they were to live would 
meet their ideas. This body was composed of New 
Englanders, mostly veterans of the Revolutionary War, 
and led by officers who had stood well in the Continental 
army. 

When, in the fall of 1783, the Continental army was 
disbanded, the war-worn soldiers, who had at last wrung 
victory from the reluctant years of defeat, found them- 
selves fronting grim penury. Some were worn with 
wounds and sickness ; all were poor and unpaid ; and 
Congress had no means to pay them. Many among 
them felt that they had small chance to repair their 
broken fortunes, if they returned to the homes they had 
abandoned seven weary years before, when the guns of 
the minute-men first called them to battle. 

These heroes of the blue and buff turned their eyes 
westward to the fertile lands lying beyond the moun- 
tains. They petitioned Congress to mark out a Terri- 
tory, in what is now the State of Ohio, as the seat of a 
distinct colony, in time to become one of the confede- 
rated States ; and they asked that their bounty lands 
should be set off for them in this territory. Two 



i82 The Winning of the West 

hundred and eighty-five officers of the Continental line 
joined in this petition ; one hundred and fifty-five, over 
half, were from Massachusetts, the State which had 
furnished more troops than any other to the Revolution- 
ary armies. The remainder were from Connecticut, 
New Hampshire, New Jersey, and Maryland. 

The signers of this petition desired to change the 
paper obligations of Congress, which they held, into 
fertile wild lands which they should themselves subdue 
by their labor ; and out of these wild lands they pro- 
posed to make a new State. Finally, in the early spring 
of 1786, some of the New England oflGicers met at the 
" Bunch of Grapes " tavern in Boston, and organized 
the Ohio Company of Associates. They at once sent 
one of their number as a delegate to New York, where 
the Continental Congress was in session, to lay their 
memorial before that body. 

Congress was considering an ordinance for the gov- 
ernment of the Northwest, when the memorial was 
presented, and the former was delayed until the latter 
could be considered by the committee to which it 
had been referred. In July, Dr. Manasseh Cutler, of 
Ipswich, Massachusetts, arrived as a second delegate 
to look after the interests of the company. 

The one point of difficulty was the slavery question. 
Only eight States were at the time represented in the 
Congress ; these were Massachusetts, New York, New 
Jersey, Delaware, Virginia, North and South Carolina, 
and Georgia — thus five of the eight States were South- 
ern. But the Federal Congress rose in this, almost its 
last act, to a lofty pitch of patriotism ; and the Southern 
States showed a marked absence of sectional feeling in 
the matter. The committee that brought in the ordi- 
nance, the majority being Southern men, also reported 



The Northwest Territory; Ohio 183 

an article prohibiting slavery ; and the report was 
vigoroush^ pushed by the two Virginians on the com- 
mittee, William Grayson and Richard Henry Lee. 
The article was adopted by a vote unanimous, except 
for the dissent of one delegate, a nobody from New 
York. 

The ordinance established a territorial government, 
with a governor, secretary, and judges. A General 
Assembly was authorized as soon as there should be 
five thousand free male inhabitants in the district. 
The lower house was elective, the upper house, or 
council, was appointive. The Legislature was to elect 
a territorial delegate to Congress. The governor was 
required to own a freehold of one thousand acres in the 
district, a judge five hundred, and a representative two 
hundred ; and no man was allowed to vote unless he 
possessed a freehold of fifty acres. These provisions 
would seem strangely undemocratic if applied to a 
similar Territory in our own day. 

The all-important features of the ordinance were 
contained in the six articles of compact between the 
confederated States and the people and States of the 
Territory, to be forever unalterable, save by the consent 
of both parties. The first guaranteed complete freedom 
of worship and religious belief to all peaceable and 
orderly persons. The second provided for trial by jur}', 
the writ of habeas corpus, the privileges of the common 
law, and the right of proportional legislative represen- 
tation. The third enjoined that faith should be kept 
with the Indians, and provided that "schools and the 
means of education " should forever be encouraged, in- 
asmuch as "religion, morality, and knowledge" were 
necessary to good government. The fourth ordained 
that the new States formed in the Northwest should 



184 The Winning of the West 

forever form part of the United States, and be subject 
to the laws, as were the others. The fifth provided for 
the formation and admission of not less than three or 
more than five States, formed out of this Northwestern 
Territory, whenever such a putative State should con- 
tain sixty thousand inhabitants ; the form of govern- 
ment to be republican, and the State, when created, to 
stand on an equal footing with all the other States. 

The sixth and most important article declared that 
there should never be slavery or involuntary servitude 
in the Northwest, otherwise than for the punishment 
of convicted criminals, provided, however, that fugitive 
slaves from the older States might lawfully be reclaimed 
by their owners. This was the greatest blow struck 
for freedom and against slavery in all our history, save 
only Lincoln's emancipation proclamation, for it deter- 
mined that in the final struggle the mighty West should 
side with the right against the wrong. It was in its 
results a deadly stroke against the traffic in and owner- 
ship of human beings, and the blow was dealt by 
Southern men, to whom all honor should ever be 
given. 

In one respect the ordinance marked a new departure 
of the most radical kind. The adoption of the policy 
therein outlined has worked a complete revolution in 
the way of looking at new communities formed by 
colonization from the parent country. Yet the very 
completeness of this revolution to a certain extent veils 
from us its importance. The Ordinance of 1787 decreed 
that the new States should stand in every respect on an 
equal footing with the old ; and yet should be individ- 
ually bound together with them. This was something 
entirely new in the history of colonization. Hitherto 
every new colony had either been subject to the parent 



The Northwest Territory; Ohio 185 

state, or independent of it, England, Holland, France, 
and Spain, when they founded colonies beyond the sea, 
founded them for the good of the parent state, and 
governed them as dependencies. The home country 
might treat her colonies well or ill, she might cherish 
and guard them, or oppress them with harshness and 
severity, but she never treated them as equals. 

The American Republic, taking advantage of its for- 
tunate Federal features and of its strong central govern- 
ment, boldly struck out on a new path. New States 
were created, which stood on exactly the same footing 
as the old ; and yet these new States formed integral 
and inseparable parts of a great and rapidly growing 
nation. The movement was original with the American 
Republic ; she was dealing with new conditions, and on 
this point the history of England merely taught her 
what to avoid. 

The vital feature of the ordinance was the prohibition 
of slavery, which was brought about by the action of 
the Ohio Company. Without the prohibition the com- 
pany would probably not have undertaken its experi- 
ment in colonization ; and save for the pressure of the 
company, slavery would hardly have been abolished. 
Congress wished to sell the lands, and was much im- 
pressed by the solid worth of the founders of the asso- 
ciation. The New Englanders were anxious to buy 
the lands, but were earnest in their determination to 
exclude slavery from the new Territory. The slave 
question was not at the time a burning issue between 
North and South ; for no Northerner thought of cru- 
sading to destroy the evil, while most enlightened 
Southerners were fond of planning how to do away with 
it. The tact of the company's representative before 
Congress, Dr. Cutler, did the rest. 



i86 The Winninof of the West 



& 



A fortnight after the passage of the ordinance, the 
transaction was completed by the sale of a million and 
a half acres, north of the Ohio, to the Ohio Company. 
The price was nominally seventy cents an acre ; but as 
payment was made in depreciated public securities, the 
real price was only eight or nine cents an acre. 

The company was well organized, the founders 
showing the invaluable New England aptitude for bus- 
iness, and there was no delay in getting the settlement 
started. After some deliberation the lands lying along 
the Ohio, on both sides of, but mainly below, the Mus- 
kingum, were chosen for the site of the new colony. 

In January and February, 1788, the new settlers be- 
gan to reach the banks of the Youghiogheny, and set 
about building boats to launch when the river opened. 
There were forty-eight settlers in all who started down 
stream, their leader being General Rufus Putnam. He 
was a tried and gallant officer, who had served with 
honor not only in the Revolutionary armies, but in the 
war which crushed the French power in America. On 
April 7, 1788, he stepped from his boat, which he had 
very appropriately named the Mayflower, on to the bank 
of the Muskingum. The settlers immediately set to 
work felling trees, building log houses and a stockade, 
clearing fields, and laying out the ground-plan of 
Marietta ; for they christened the new town after the 
French Queen, Marie Antoinette. 

The new settlers were almost all soldiers of the Rev- 
olutionary armies ; they were hardworking, orderly 
men of trained courage and of keen intellect. An out- 
side observer speaks of them as being the best informed, 
the most courteous and industrious, and the most law- 
abiding of all the settlers who had come to the frontier, 
while their leaders were men of a higher type than was 



The Northwest Territory; Ohio 187 

elsewhere to be found in the West. No better material 
for founding a new State existed anywhere. With such 
a foundation the State was little likely to plunge into 
the perilous abysses of anarchic license or of separatism 
and disunion. Moreover, to plant a settlement of this 
kind on the edge of the Indian-haunted wilderness 
showed that the founders possessed both hardihood and 
resolution. 

Rufus Putnam and his fellow New Englanders built 
their new town under the guns of a Federal fort, only 
just beyond the existing boundary of settlement, and 
on land guaranteed them by the Federal Government. 
The dangers they ran and the hardships they suffered 
in no wise approached those undergone and overcome 
by the iron-willed, iron-limbed hunters who first built 
their lonely cabins on the Cumberland and Kentucky. 

In the summer of 1788 Dr. Manasseh Cutler visited 
the colony he had helped to found, and kept a diary of 
of his journey. His trip through Pennsylvania was 
marked merely by such incidents as were common at 
that time on every journey in the United States away 
from the larger towns. He travelled with various com- 
panions, stopping at taverns and private houses ; and 
both guests and hosts were fond of trying their skill 
with the rifle, either at a mark or at squirrels. In mid- 
August he reached Coxe's fort on the Ohio, and came 
for the first time to the frontier proper. Here he em- 
barked on a big flatboat with forty-eight others, besides 
cattle. They drifted and paddled down stream, and on 
the evening of the second day reached Muskingum. 

The next three weeks he passed very comfortably 
with his friends, taking part in the various social enter- 
tainments, walking through the woods, and visiting 
one or two camps of friendly Indians with all the 



1 88 The Winning of the West 

curiosity of a pleasure- tourist. Then, bringing his visit 
to a close, within a month he was back at his starting- 
point, well pleased with the industry and prospects of 
the settlers. 

In the fall of 1787 another purchase of public lands 
was negotiated, by the Miami Company. The chief 
personage in this company was John Cleves Symmes, 
one of the first judges of the Northwestern Territory. 
Rights were acquired to take up one million acres, and 
under these rights three small settlements were made 
towards the close of the year 1788. One of them was 
chosen by St. Clair, the first governor, to be the seat 
of government. This little town had been called 
Losantiville in its infancy, but St. Clair re-christend it 
Cincinnati, in honor of the Society of the ofl&cers of the 
Continental army. 

The men who formed these Miami Company colonies 
came largely from the Middle States. Like the founders 
of Marietta, very many of them, if not most, had 
served in the Continental army. They were good 
settlers ; they made good material out of which to build 
up a great State. Their movement was modelled on 
that of Putnam and his associates. Civil government 
was speedily organized. St. Clair and the judges 
formed the first legislature ; in theory they were per- 
mitted to adopt laws already in existence in the old 
States, but as a matter of fact they tried any legislative 
experiment they saw fit. 



CHAPTER XX 

ST. CLAIR'S DEIFEAT, 179I 

THE Federal troops were camped in the Federal 
territory north of the Ohio. They garrisoned the 
forts and patrolled between the little log towns. They 
were commanded by the Federal General Harmar, 
and the territory was ruled by the Federal Gover- 
nor St. Clair. Thenceforth the national authorities 
and the regular troops played the chief parts in the 
struggle for the Northwest. The frontier militia be- 
came a mere adjunct — often necessary, but always un- 
trustworthy — of the regular forces. 

By 1787 the Indian war had begun with all its old 
fury. The thickly settled districts were not much 
troubled, and the towns which, like Marietta in the 
following year, grew up under the shadow of a Federal 
fort, were comparatively safe. But the frontier of 
Kentucky, and of Virginia proper along the Ohio, 
suffered severely. There was great scarcity of powder 
and lead, and even of guns, and there was difficulty in 
procuring provisions for those militia who consented 
to leave their work and turn out when summoned. 
The settlers were harried, and the surveyors feared to 
go out to their work on the range. 

The Federal authorities were still hopelessly en- 
deavoring to come to .some understanding with the 
Indians ; they were holding treaties with some of the 

189 



iQO The Winning of the West 

tribes, sending addresses and making speeches to others, 
and keeping envoys in the neighborhood of Detroit. 
These envoys watched the Indians who were there, 
and tried to influence the great gatherings of different 
tribes who came together at Sandusky to consult as to 
the white advance. 

All the while the ravages grew steadily more severe. 
The Federal officers at the little widely scattered forts 
were at their wits' ends in trjdng to protect the out- 
lying settlers and retaliate on the Indians ; and as the 
latter grew bolder they menaced the forts themselves 
and harried the troops who convoyed provisions to 
them. 

The subalterns in command of the little detachments 
which moved between the posts, whether they went by 
land or water, were forced to be ever on the watch 
against surprise and ambush. This was particularly 
the case with the garrison at Vincennes. The Wabash 
Indians were all the time out in parties to murder and 
plunder ; and yet these same thieves and murderers 
were continually coming into town and strolling inno- 
cently about the fort ; for it was impossible to tell the 
peaceful Indians from the hostile. They were ever in 
communication with the equally treacherous and 
ferocious Miami tribes, to whose towns the war parties 
often brought five or six scalps in a day, and prisoners, 
too, doomed to a death of awful torture at the stake. 

By the summer of 1790 the raids of the Indians be- 
came unbearable. With great reluctance the National 
Government concluded that an effort to chastise the 
hostile savages could no longer be delayed ; and those 
on the Maumee, or Miami of the Lakes, and on the 
Wabash, whose guilt had been peculiarly heinous, 
v/ere singled out as the objects of attack. 



St. Clair's Defeat 191 

The expedition against the "Wabash towns was led 
by the Federal commander at Vincennes, Major Ham- 
tranck. No resistance was encountered ; and after 
burning a few villages of bark huts and destroying 
some corn he returned to Vincennes, 

The main expedition was that against the Miami 
Indians, and was led by General Harmar himself. It 
was arranged that there should be a nucleus of regular 
troops, but that the force should consist mainly of 
militia from Kentucky and Pennsylvania, the former 
furnishing twice as many as the latter. The troops 
were to gather on the r5th of September at Fort 
Washington, on the north bank of the Ohio, a day's 
journey down-stream from Limestone. 

At the appointed time the militia began to straggle 
in ; the regular officers had long been busy getting 
their own troops, artillery, and military stores in readi- 
ness, and felt the utmost disappointment at the appear- 
ance of the militia. They numbered but few of the 
trained Indian fighters of frontier ; many of them 
were hired substitutes ; most of them were entirely un- 
acquainted with Indian warfare and were new to the 
life of the wilderness. In point of numbers the force 
was amply sufficient for its work. But the militia, who 
composed four fifths of the force, were worthless. 

A fortnight's halting progress through the wilder- 
ness brought the army to a small branch of the Miami 
of the Lakes. Here a horse patrol captured a Maumee 
Indian, who informed his captors that the Indians knew 
of their approach and were leaving their towns. On 
hearing this an effort was made to hurry forward ; but 
when the army reached the Miami towns, on October 
17th, they had been deserted. They stood at the 
junction of two branches of the Miami, the St. Mary 



192 The Winning of the West 

and the St. Joseph, about one hundred and seventy 
miles from Fort Washington. The troops had marched 
about ten miles a day. The towns consisted of a 
couple of hundred wigwams, with some good log huts ; 
and there were gardens, orchards, and immense fields 
of corn. All these the soldiers destroyed, and the 
militia loaded themselves with plunder. 

Much angered by the incapacity of the colonel com- 
manding the militia, Harmar gave the command to 
Col. John Hardin of Kentucky, who left the camp next 
morning with two hundred men, including thirty reg- 
ulars. But the militia had turned sulky. They did 
not wish to go, and they began to desert and return to 
camp immediately after leaving it. At least half of 
them had thus left him, when he stumbled on a body 
of about one hundred Indians. The Indians advanced 
firing, and the militia fled with abject cowardice, many 
not even discharging their guns. The thirty regulars 
stood to their work, and about ten of the militia 
stayed with them. This small detachment fought 
bravely, and was cut to pieces, but six or seven men 
escaping. 

This defeat took the heart out of the militia and left 
them thoroughly demoralized. So after a couple of days 
were spent in destroying and ravaging, the return march 
to Fort Washington was begun. But Harmar wished 
to avenge his losses and to forestall any attempt of 
the Indians to harass his shaken and retreating forces. 
Accordingly that night he sent back against the towns 
a detachment of four hundred men, sixty of whom were 
regulars, and the rest picked militia. They were 
commanded by Major Wyllys, of the regulars. It was 
a capital mistake of Harmar' s to send ofi"a mere detach- 
ment on such a business. He should have taken a 



St. Clair's Defeat 193 

force composed of all his regulars and the best of the 
militia, and led it in person. 

The detachment marched soon after midnight, and 
reached the Miami at daybreak on October 22d. It 
was divided into three columns, which marched a few 
hundred yards apart, and were supposed to keep in 
touch with one another. The middle column was led 
by Wyllys in person, and included the regulars and a 
few militia. The rest of the militia composed the flank 
columns and marched under their own oflBcers. 

Immediately after crossing the Miami, and reaching 
the neighborhood of the town, Indians were seen. 
The columns were out of touch, and both of those on 
the flanks pressed forward against small parties of 
braves, whom they drove before them up the St. Joseph. 
Heedless of the orders they had received, the militia 
thus pressed forward, killing and scattering the small 
parties in their front and losing all connection with the 
middle column of regulars. Meanwhile the main body 
of the Indians gathered to assail this column, and over- 
whelmed it by numbers. The regulars fought well and 
died hard, but they were completely cut off, and most 
of them, including their commander, were slain. The 
survivors made their way back to the main army, and 
joined its slow retreat. 

The net result was a mortifying failure. In all, the 
regulars had seventy-five men killed and three wounded, 
while the militia lost one hundred and eight killed or 
missing and twenty-eight wounded. The march back 
was very dreary ; and the militia became so ungovern- 
able that at one time Harmar reduced them to order 
only by threatening to fire on them with the artillery. 

During the months following this defeat the situa- 
tion grew steadily worse, both along the Ohio and in 



194 The Winning of the West 

the Southwest. But the Georgians, and the settlers 
along the Tennessee and Cumberland, were harassed 
rather than seriously menaced by the Creek war parties ; 
but in the north the more dangerous Indians of the 
Miami, the Wabash, and the Lakes gathered in bodies 
so large as fairly to deserve the name of armies. More- 
over, the pressure of the white advance was far heavier 
in the north. The pioneers who settled in the Ohio 
basin were many times as numerous as those who settled 
on the lands west of the Oconee and north of the Cum- 
berland, and were fed from States much more populous. 
The advance was stronger, the resistance more desper- 
ate ; naturally the open break occurred where the strain 
was most intense. 

As all the Northwestern tribes were banded in open 
war, it was useless to let the conflict remain a succes- 
sion of raids and counter-raids. Only a severe stroke, 
delivered by a formidable army, could cow the tribes. 
Accordingly preparations were made for a campaign 
with a mixed force of regulars, special levies, and 
militia ; and St. Clair, already Governor of the North- 
western Territory, was put in command of the army as 
Major-General. 

Before the army was ready the Federal Government 
was obliged to take other measures for the defence of 
the border. Small bodies of rangers were raised from 
the frontier militia for defence ; and the Kentuckians 
were authorized to undertake two offensive expeditions 
against the Wabash Indians so as to prevent them from 
giving aid to the Miami tribes, whom St. Clair was to 
attack. Both expeditions were carried on by bands of 
mounted volunteers, such as had followed Clark on his 
various raids. In both expeditions the volunteers 
behaved well and committed no barbarous act. The 



St. Clair's Defeat 195 

Wabash Indians were cowed and disheartened by their 
punishment, and in consequence gave no aid to the 
Miami tribes ; but beyond this the raids accomphshed 
nothing, and brought no nearer the wished-for time of 
peace. 

Meanwhile St. Clair was striving vainly to hasten 
the preparations for his own far more formidable task. 
There was much delay in forwarding him the men and 
provisions and munitions. Congress hesitated and de- 
bated ; the Secretary of "War, hampered by a newly 
created ofl5ce and insufl5cient means, did not show to 
advantage in organizing the campaign, and was slow 
in carrying out his plans ; while the delays were so ex- 
traordinary that the troops did not make the final move 
from Fort Washington until mid-September. 

St. Clair himself was broken in health ; he was a 
sick, weak, elderly man, high-minded, and zealous 
to do his duty, but totally unfit for the terrible respon- 
sibilities of such an expedition against such foes. 
The troops were of wretched stuff. There were two 
small regiments of regular infantry, the rest of the 
army being composed of six-months' levies and of 
militia ordered out for this particular campaign. The 
pay was contemptible, each private being given 
three dollars a month ; while the lieutenants received 
twenty-two, the captains thirty, and the colonels sixty 
dollars. Most of the recruits were hurried into a cam- 
paign against peculiarly formidable foes before they 
had acquired the rudiments of a soldier's training, or 
even understood what woodcraft meant. The ofiicers 
were men of courage ; but they were utterly untrained 
themselves, and had no time in which to train their 
men. Harmar had learned a bitter lesson the pre- 
ceding year ; he knew well what Indians could do, and 



196 The Winning of the West 

what raw troops could not ; and he insisted with em- 
phasis that the only possible outcome to St. Clair's 
expedition was defeat. 

As the raw troops straggled to Pittsburg they were 
shipped down the Ohio to Fort Washington ; and St. 
Clair made the headquarters of his army at a new fort 
some twenty-five miles northward, which he christened 
Fort Hamilton. During September the army slowy 
assembled ; two small regiments of regulars, two of six- 
months' levies, a number of Kentucky militia, a few 
cavalry, and a couple of small batteries of light guns. 
After wearisome delays, due mainly to the utter ineflS- 
ciency of the quartermaster and contractor, the start 
for the Indian towns was made on October the 4th. 
On October 13th a halt was made to build another little 
fort, christened in honor of Jefferson. There were 
further delays, caused by the wretched management 
of the commissariat department, and the march was 
not resumed until the 24th, the numerous sick being 
left in Fort Jefferson. Then the army once more stum- 
bled northward through the wilderness. 

There was Indian sign, old and new, all through the 
woods ; and the scouts and stragglers occasionally inter- 
changed shots with small parties of braves, and now 
and then lost a man, killed or captured. It was there- 
fore certain that the savages knew every movement 
of the army, which, as it slowly neared the Miami 
towns, was putting itself within easy striking range 
of the most formidable Indian confederacy in the 
Northwest, The density of the forest was such that 
only the utmost watchfulness could prevent the foe 
from approaching within arm's length unperceived. It 
behooved St. Clair to be on his guard, and he had 
been warned by Washington, who had never forgotten 



St. Clair's Defeat 197 

the scenes of Braddock's defeat, of the danger of a 
surprise. But St. Clair was broken down by the worry 
and by continued sickness ; time and again it was 
doubtful whether he could so much as stay with the 
army. The second in command, Major-General Rich- 
ard Butler, was also sick most of the time ; and, like 
St. Clair, he possessed none of the qualities of leader- 
ship save courage. The whole burden fell on the Ad- 
jutant-General, Colonel Winthrop Sargent, an old 
Revolutionary soldier, who showed ability of a good 
order ; yet in the actual arrangements for battle he 
was, of course, unable to remedy the blunders of his 
superiors. 

St. Clair should have covered his front and flanks for 
miles around with scouting parties ; but he rarely sent 
any out, and, thanks to letting the management of 
those who did go devolve on his subordinates, and to 
not having their reports made to him in person, he de- 
rived no benefit from what they saw. He had twenty 
Chickasaws with him ; but he sent these off on an 
extended trip, lost touch of them entirely, and never 
saw them again until after the battle. He did not 
seem to realize that he was himself in danger of at- 
tack. When some fifty miles or so from the Miami 
towns, on the last day of October, sixty of the militia 
deserted ; and he actually sent back after them one of 
his two regular regiments, thus weakening by one 
half the only trustworthy portion of his force. 

On November 3d the army, now reduced by deser- 
tions to a total of about fourteen hundred men, camped 
on the eastern fork of the Wabash, high up, where it 
was but twenty yards wide. There was snow on the 
ground and the little pools were skimmed with ice. 
The camp was on a narrow rise of ground, where the 



198 The Winning of the West 

troops were cramped together, the artillery and most 
of the horse in the middle. On both flanks, and along 
most of the rear, the ground was low and wet. Ail 
around, the wintry woods lay in frozen silence. In 
front the militia were thrown across the creek, and 
nearly a quarter of a mile beyond the rest of the troops. 
Parties of Indians were seen during the afternoon, and 
they skulked around the lines at night, so that the 
sentinels frequently fired at them ; yet neither St. Clair 
nor Butler took any adequate measures to ward off the 
impending blow. 

Next morning the men were under arms, as usual, 
by dawn, St. Clair intending to throw up entrench- 
ments and then make a forced march in light order 
against the Indian towns. But he was forestalled. 
Soon after sunrise, just as the men were dismissed from 
parade, a sudden assault was made upon the militia, 
who lay unprotected beyond the creek. The unex- 
pectedness and fury of the onset, the heavy firing, and 
the appalling whoops and yells of the throngs of 
painted savages threw the militia in disorder. After a 
few moments' resistance they broke and fled in wild 
panic to the camp of the regulars, among whom they 
drove in a frightened herd, spreading dismay and 
confusion. 

A furious battle followed. After the first onset the 
Indians fought in silence, no sound coming from them 
save the incessant rattle of their fire, as they crept from 
log to log, from tree to tree, ever closer and closer. 
The soldiers stood in close order, in the open ; their 
musketry and artillery fire made a tremendous noise, 
but did little damage to a foe they could hardly see. 
Now and then, through the hanging smoke, terrible 
figures flitted, painted black and red, the feathers of 



St. Clair's Defeat 199 

the hawk and eagle braided in their long scalp-locks ; 
but save for these glimpses, the soldiers knew the pre- 
sence of their sombre enemy only from the fearful 
rapidity with which their comrades fell dead and 
wounded in the ranks. 

The Indians fought with the utmost boldness and 
ferocity, and with the utmost skill and caution. Un- 
der cover of the smoke of the heavy but harmless fire 
from the army they came up so close that they shot the 
troops down as hunters slaughter a herd of standing 
buffalo. Watching their chance, they charged again 
and again with the tomahawk, gliding into close quar- 
ters while their bewildered foes were still blindly firing 
into the smoke-shrouded woods. 

At first the army as a whole fought firmly. The 
ofiBcers behaved very well, cheering and encouraging 
their men ; but they were the special targets of the In- 
dians, and fell rapidly. St. Clair and Butler by their 
cool fearlessness in the hour of extreme peril made some 
amends for their shortcomings as commanders. St. 
Clair's clothes were pierced by eight bullets, but he 
was himself untouched. General Butler had his arm 
broken early in the fight, but he continued to walk to 
and fro along the line until he was mortally wounded, 
when he was carried to the middle of the camp, where 
he sat propped up by knapsacks. Men and horses 
were falling around him at every moment. 

Instead of being awed by the bellowing artillery, the 
Indians made the gunners a special object of attack. 
Man after man was picked off, until almost all were 
slain or disabled. The artillery was thus almost 
silenced, and the Indians, emboldened by success, 
swarmed forward and seized the guns, while at the 
same time a part of the left wing of the army began to 



200 The Winning of the West 

shrink back. But the Indians were now on compara- 
tively open ground, where the regulars could see them 
and get at them ; and under St. Clair's own leadership 
the troops rushed fiercely at the savages, with fixed 
bayonets, and drove them back to cover. By this time 
the confusion and disorder were great ; while from 
every hollow and grass patch, from behind every stump 
and tree and fallen log, the Indians continued their 
fire. Again and again the ofl&cers led forward the 
troops in bayonet charges ; and at first the men fol- 
lowed them with a will. Each charge seemed for a 
moment to be successful, the Indians rising in swarms 
and running in headlong flight from the bayonets. 
The men, however, were too clumsy and ill-trained in 
forest warfare to overtake their fleet, half-naked antag- 
onists. The latter, though they fled, came back as 
they pleased ; and they were only visible when raised 
by a charge. 

Among the packhorsemen were some who were ac- 
customed to the use of the rifle and to life in the 
woods ; and these fought well. One, named Benjamin 
Van Cleve, kept a journal, in which he described what 
he saw of the fight. He had no gun, but five minutes 
after the firing began he saw a soldier near him with 
his arm swinging useless, and he borrowed the 
wounded man's musket and cartridges. The smoke 
had settled to within three feet of the ground, so he 
knelt, covering himself behind a tree, and only fired 
when he saw an Indian's head, or noticed one running 
from cover to cover. He fired away all his ammuni- 
tion, and the bands of his musket flew off"; he picked 
up another just as two levy officers ordered a charge, 
and followed the charging party at a run. By this 
time the battalions were broken, and only some thirty 



St. Clair's Defeat 201 

men followed the officers. The Indians fled before the 
bayonets until they reached a ravine, where they halted 
behind an impenetrable tangle of fallen logs. The 
soldiers also halted and were speedily swept away by 
the fire of the Indians, whom they could not reach ; 
but Van Cleve, showing his skill as a woodsman, cov- 
ered himself behind a small tree, and gave back shot 
for shot until all his ammunition was gone ; then he ran 
at full speed back to camp. Here he found that the 
artillery had been taken and re-taken again and again. 
Stricken men lay in heaps everywhere, and the charg- 
ing troops were once more driving the Indians across 
the creek in front of the camp. 

No words can paint the hopelessness and horror of 
such a struggle as that in which the soldiers were en- 
gaged. They were hemmed in by foes who showed no 
mercy and whose blows they could in no way return. 
For two hours or so the troops kept up a slowly lessen- 
ing resistance ; but by degrees their hearts failed. The 
wounded had been brought towards the middle of the 
lines, where the baggage and tents were, and an ever- 
growing proportion of unwounded men joined them. 
In vain the officers tried, by encouragement, by jeers, 
by blows, to drive them back to the fight. They were 
unnerved. 

There was but one thing to do. If possible the rem- 
nant of the army must be saved, and it could only be 
saved by instant flight, even at the cost of abandoning 
the wounded. The broad road by which the army had 
advanced was the only line of retreat. The artillery 
had already been spiked and abandoned. On one of 
the few horses still left, St. Clair mounted. He gath- 
ered together those fragments of the different battalions 
which contained the men who still kept heart and head, 



202 The Winnlncr of the West 



t> 



and ordered them to charge and regain the road from 
which the savages had cut them off. Repeated orders 
were necessary before some of the men could be roused 
from their stupor sufficiently to follow the charging 
party ; and they were only induced to move when told 
that it was to retreat. 

At the head of the column, the coolest and boldest 
men drew up ; and they fell on the Indians with such 
fury as to force them back well beyond the road. This 
made an opening through which, said Van Cleve, the 
packer, the rest of the troops " pressed like a drove of 
bullocks." The Indians were surprised by the vigor 
of the charge, and puzzled as to its object. They 
opened out on both sides and half the men had gone 
through before they fired more than a chance shot or 
two. Then they fell on the rear, and began a hot 
pursuit. St. Clair sent his aide to the front to keep 
order, but neither he nor anyone else could check the 
flight. Major Clark tried to rally his battalion to 
cover the retreat, but he was killed and the effort 
abandoned. 

There never was a wilder rout. As soon as the men 
began to run, and realized that in flight there lay some 
hope of safety, they broke into a stampede which soon 
became uncontrollable. Horses, soldiers, and the few 
camp followers and women who had accompanied the 
army were all mixed together. Neither command nor 
example had the slightest weight ; the men were aban- 
doned to the terrible selfishness of utter fear. They 
threw away their weapons as they ran. They thought 
of nothing but escape, and fled in a huddle, the stronger 
and the few who had horses trampling their way to the 
front through the old, the weak, and the wounded ; 
while behind them raged the Indian tomahawk. St. 



St. Clair's Defeat 203 

Clair, himself, tried to stem the torrent of fugitives ; 
but he failed, being swept forward by the crowd. 

Among Van Cleve's fellow packers were his uncle 
and a young man named Bonham, who was his close 
and dear friend. The uncle was shot in the wrist, the 
ball lodging near his shoulder ; but he escaped. Bon- 
ham, just before the retreat began, was shot through 
both hips, so that he could not walk. Young Van 
Cleve got him a horse, on which he was with difficulty 
mounted ; then, as the flight began, the two separated. 
Bonham rode until the pursuit had almost ceased ; then, 
weak and crippled, he was thrown off his horse and 
slain. Meanwhile Van Cleve ran steadily on foot. By 
the time he had gone two miles most of the mounted 
men had passed him. A boy, on the point of falling 
from exhaustion, now begged his help ; and the kind- 
hearted backwoodsman seized the lad and pulled him 
along nearly two miles farther, when he himself became 
so worn out that he nearly fell. There were still two 
horses in the rear, one carrying three men, and one 
two ; and behind the latter Van Cleve, summoning his 
strength, threw the boy, who escaped. Nor did Van 
Cleve's pity for his fellows cease with this ; for he 
stopped to tie his handkerchief around the knee of a 
wounded man. His violent exertions gave him a cramp 
in both thighs, so that he could barely walk ; and in 
consequence the strong and active passed him until he 
was within a hundred yards of the rear, where the In- 
dians were tomahawking the old and the wounded 
men. So close were they that for a moment his heart 
sunk in despair ; but he threw off his shoes ; the touch 
of the cold ground seemed to revive him ; and he again 
began to trot forward. He got around a bend in the 
road, passing half a dozen other fugitives ; and long 



204 The Winning of the West 

afterwards he told how well he remembered thinking 
that it would be some time before they would all be 
massacred and his own turn come. However, at this 
point the pursuit ceased, and a few miles farther on he 
had gained the middle of the flying troops, and like 
them came to a walk. He fell in with a queer group, 
consisting of the sole remaining officer of the artillery^ 
an infantry corporal, and a woman called Red-headed 
Nance. Both of the latter were crying, the corporal 
for the loss of his wife, the woman for the loss of her 
child. The worn out officer hung on the corporal's 
arm, while Van Cleve " carried his fusee and accoutre- 
ments and led Nance ; and in this sociable way arrived 
at Fort Jefferson a little after sunset." 

Before reaching Fort Jefferson the wretched army en- 
countered the regular regiment which had been so un- 
fortunately detached a couple of days before the battle. 
The most severely wounded were left in the fort ; and 
then the flight was renewed, until the disorganized and 
half-armed rabble reached Fort Washington, and the 
mean log huts of Cincinnati. Six hundred and thirty 
men had been killed and over two hundred and eighty 
wounded ; less than five hundred, only about a third 
of the whole number engaged in the battle, remained 
unhurt. The Indians were rich with the spoil. They 
got horses, tents, guns, axes, powder, clothing, and 
blankets — in short everything their hearts prized. 
Their loss was comparatively slight ; it may not have 
been one twentieth that of the whites. They did not 
at the moment follow up their victory, each band going 
off with its own share of the booty. But the triumph was 
so overwhelming, and the reward so great, that the war 
spirit received a great impetus in all the tribes. The 
bands of warriors that marched against the frontier 



St. Clair's Defeat 205 

were more numerous, more formidable, and bolder than 
ever. 

When the remnant of the defeated army reached the 
banks of the Ohio, St. Clair sent his aide, Denny, to 
carry the news to Philadelphia, at that time the national 
capital. The river was swollen, there were incessant 
snow-storms, and ice formed heavily, so that it took 
twenty days of toil and cold before Denny reached 
Wheeling and got horses. For ten days more he rode 
over the bad winter roads, reaching Philadelphia with 
the evil tidings on the evening of December 19th. It 
was thus six weeks after the defeat of the army be- 
fore the news was brought to the anxious Federal 
authorities. 

The young officer called first on the Secretary of 
War ; but as soon as the Secretary realized the impor- 
tance of the information he had it conveyed to the 
President. Washington was at dinner, with some 
guests, and was called from the table to listen to the 
tidings of ill fortune. He returned with unmoved face, 
and at dinner, and at the reception which followed, he 
behaved with his usual stately courtesy to those whom 
he was entertaining, not so much as hinting at what 
he had heard. But when the last guest had gone, his 
pent-up wrath broke forth in one of those fits of vol- 
canic fury which sometimes shattered his iron outward 
calm. Walking up and down the room he burst out in 
wild regret for the rout and disaster, and bitter invec- 
tive against St. Clair, reciting how, in that very room, 
he had wished the unfortunate commander success and 
honor and had bidden him above all things beware of 
a surprise. " He went off with that last solemn warn- 
ing thrown into his ears," spoke Washington, as he 
strode to and fro, ' ' and yet to sufier that army to be 



2o6 The Winningf of the West 



o 



cut to pieces, hacked, butchered, tomahawked, by a 
surprise, the very thing I guarded him against ! O 
God, O God, he 's worse than a murderer ! How can 
he answer to his country !" Then, calming himself 
by a mighty effort : "General St. Clair shall have jus- 
tice. ... he shall have full justice." And St. 
Clair did receive full justice, and mercy too, from both 
Washington and Congress. For the sake of his cour- 
age and honorable character they held him guiltless of 
the disaster for which his lack of capacity as a general 
was so largely accountable. 



CHAPTER XXI 

MAD ANTHONY WAYNE ; AND THE FIGHT OF THE 
FAI^IvEN TIMBERS, 1792-1795. 

THE United States Government was almost as 
much demoralized by St. Clair's defeat as was 
St. Clair's own army. There was little national glory 
or reputation to be won even by a successful Indian 
war ; while defeat was a serious disaster to a govern- 
ment which was as yet far from firm in its seat. The 
Eastern people were lukewarm about a war in which 
they had no direct interest ; and the foolish frontiers- 
men, instead of backing up the administration, railed 
at it. Under such conditions the national administra- 
tion, instead of at once redoubling its efforts to ensure 
success by shock of arms, was driven to the ignoble 
necessity of yet again striving for a hopeless peace. 

In pursuance of their timidly futile policy of friendli- 
ness, the representatives of the National Government, 
in the spring of 1792, sent peace envoys, with a flag of 
truce, to the hostile tribes. The unfortunate ambassa- 
dors thus chosen for sacrifice were Colonel John Har- 
din, the gallant but ill-starred leader of Kentucky 
horse ; and a Federal officer, Major Alexander True- 
man. In June they started towards the hostile towns, 
with one or two companions, and soon fell in with 
some Indians, who on being shown the white flag, and 
informed of the object of their visit, received them with 

207 



2o8 The Winnine of the West 



t> 



every appearance of good will. But this was merely a 
mask. A few hours later the treacherous savages sud- 
denly fell upon and slew the messengers of peace. The 
Indians never punished the treachery ; and when the 
chiefs wrote to Washington, they mentioned with cool 
indifference that " you sent us at different times differ- 
ent speeches, the bearers whereof our foolish young 
men killed on their way." 

In spite of the murder of the flag-of-truce men, re- 
newed efforts were made to secure a peace by treaty. 
In the fall of 1792 Rufus Putnam, on behalf of the 
United States, succeeded in concluding a treaty with 
the Wabash and Illinois tribes, which at least served 
to keep many of their young braves out of actual hos- 
tilities. In the following spring three commissioners 
— Benjamin Lincoln, Beverly Randolph, and Timothy 
Pickering, all men of note, — were sent to persuade the 
Miami tribes and their allies to agree to a peace. 

In May, 1793, the commissioners went to Niagara, 
where they held meetings with various Iroquois chiefs 
and exchanged friendly letters with the British officers 
of the posts, who assured them that they would help in 
the effort to conclude a peace. Captain Brant, the Iro- 
quois chief, acted as spokesman for a deputation of the 
hostile Indians from the Miami, where a great council 
was being held, at which not only the northwestern 
tribes, but the Five Nations, were in attendance. The 
commissioners then sailed to the Detroit River, having 
first sent home a strong remonstrance against the activ- 
ity displayed by the new commander on the Ohio, 
Wayne, whose vigorous measures, they said, had 
angered the Indians and were considered by the British 
" unfair and unwarrantable." 

But at Detroit they found they could do nothing. 



Mad Anthony Wayne 209 

Brant and the Iroquois urged the northwestern tribes 
not to yield any point, and promised them help, telling 
the British agent, McKee, evidently to his satisfaction, 
" we came here not only to assist with our advice, but 
other ways, . . . we came here with arms in our 
hands" ; and they insisted that the country belonged 
to the confederated tribes in common, and so could not 
be surrendered save by all. They refused to con- 
sider any proposition which did not acknowledge the 
Ohio as the boundary between them and the United 
States ; and so, towards the end of August, the com- 
missioners returned to report their failure. The final 
solution of the problem was thus left to the sword of 
Wayne. 

Major General Anthony Wayne, a Pennsylvanian, 
had been chosen to succeed St. Clair in the command 
of the army ; and on him devolved the task of wrest- 
ing victory from the formidable forest tribes, fighting 
in the almost impenetrable wilderness of their own 
country. Of all men, he was the best fitted for the 
work. In the Revolutionary War no other general 
won such a reputation for hard fighting, and for 
dogged courage. By experience he had grown to add 
caution to his dauntless energy. Once, after the bat- 
tle of Brandywine, when he had pushed close to the 
enemy, with his usual fearless self-confidence, he was 
surprised in a night attack by the equally daring 
British general Grey, and his brigade was severely 
punished with the bayonet. It was a lesson he never 
forgot ; it did not in any way abate his self-reliance or 
his fiery ardor, but it taught him the necessity of fore- 
thought, of thorough preparation, and of ceaseless 
watchfulness. A few days later he led the assault at 
Germantown, driving the Hessians before him with 



2IO The Winning of the West 

the bayonet. This was always his favorite weapon ; 
he had the utmost faith in coming to close quarters, 
and he trained his soldiers to trust the steel. At Mon- 
mouth he turned the fortunes of the day by his stub- 
born and successful resistance to the repeated bayonet 
charges of the Guards and Grenadiers. His greatest 
stroke was the storming of Stony Point, where in per- 
son he led the midnight rush of his troops over the 
walls of the British fort. He fought with his usual 
hardihood against Cornwallis ; and at the close of the 
Revolutionary War he made a successful campaign 
against the Creeks in Georgia. During this campaign 
the Creeks one night tried to surprise his camp, and 
attacked with resolute ferocity, putting to flight some 
of the troops ; but Wayne rallied them and sword in 
hand he led them against the savages, who were over- 
thrown and driven from the field. 

As soon as Wayne reached the Ohio, in June, 1792, 
he set about reorganizing the army. He had as a 
nucleus the remnant of St. Clair's beaten forces ; and 
to this were speedily added hundreds of recruits en- 
listed under new legislation by Congress, and shipped 
to him as fast as the recruiting ofiicers could send 
them. Only rigorous and long-continued discipline 
and exercise under a commander both stern and capa- 
ble, could turn such men into soldiers fit for the work 
Wayne had before him. He saw this at once, and 
realized that a premature movement meant nothing but 
another defeat ; and he began by careful and patient 
labor to turn his horde of raw recruits into a compact 
and efficient array, which he might use with his cus- 
tomary energy and decision. When he took command 
of the army — or " lyCgion," as he preferred to call it 
— the one stipulation he made was that the campaign 



Mad Anthony Wayne 211 

should not begin until his ranks were full and his men 
thoroughly disciplined. 

Towards the end of the summer of 1792 he established 
his camp on the Ohio, about twenty-seven miles below 
Pittsburg. He drilled both oflficers and men with 
unwearied patience, and gradually the officers became 
able to do the drilling themselves, while the men 
acquired the soldierly self-confidence of veterans. As 
the new recruits came in, they found themselves with 
an army which was rapidly learning how to manoeuvre 
with precision, to obey orders unhesitatingly, and to 
look forward eagerly to a battle with the foe. Through- 
out the winter Wayne kept at work, and by the spring 
he had under him twenty-five hundred regular soldiers 
who were already worthy to be trusted in a campaign. 

In May, 1793, 1^^ brought his army down the Ohio to 
Fort Washington (Cincinnati), and near it he estab- 
lished a camp which he christened Hobson's Choice. 
Here he was forced to wait the results of the fruitless 
negotiations carried on by the United States Peace 
Commissioners, and it was not until about the ist of 
October that he was given permission to begin the 
campaign. Even when he was allowed to move his 
army forward, he was fettered by injunctions not to 
run any risks. Accordingly he shifted his army to a 
place some eighty miles north of Cincinnati, where he 
encamped for the winter, building a place of strength 
which he named Greeneville in honor of his old com- 
rade in arms, General Greene. He sent forward a 
strong detachment of his troops to the site of St. 
Clair's defeat, where they built a post which was 
named Fort Recovery. The discipline of the army 
steadily improved, though now and then a soldier 
deserted. 



212 The Winning of the West 

In the spring of 1 794, as soon as the ground was dry, 
Wa5me prepared to advance towards the hostile towns 
and force a decisive battle. The mounted riflemen of 
Kentucky, who had been sent home at the beginning 
of winter, again joined him. Among these was Captain 
William Clark, brother of George Rogers Clark, and 
afterwards one of the two famous explorers who first 
crossed the continent to the Pacific. In May he was 
sent from Fort Washington with twenty dragoons and 
sixty infantry to escort 700 packhorses to Greeneville. 
When he was eighteen miles from Fort Washington, 
Indians attacked his van, driving off a few pack-horses; 
but Clark brought up his men from the rear and after 
a smart skirmish put the savages to flight. 

On the last day of June a determined assault was 
made by the Indians on Fort Recovery, which was gar- 
risoned by about two hundred men. Over two thou- 
sand warriors, all told streamed down through the 
woods in long columns, and silently neared the fort. 
Here they found camped close to the walls a part}' of 
fifty dragoons and ninety riflemen that had escorted a ,^^ 
brigade of pack-horses from Greeneville the day before,|| 
and were about to return with the unladen pack-horses. 
But soon after daybreak the Indians rushed their camp. 
Against such overwhelming numbers no effective resist- 
ance could be made. After a few moments' fight the 
men broke and ran to the fort, losing nineteen killed 
and as many wounded, together with two hundred 
pack-horses. 

The Indians, flushed with success and rendered over- 
confident by their immense superiority in numbers, 
made a rush at the fort, hoping to carry it by storm. 
They were beaten back at once with severe loss ; for in 
such work they were no match for their foes. They 



Mad Anthony Wayne 213 

then surrounded the fort, kept up a harmless fire all 
day, and renewed it the following morning. In the 
night they bore off their dead, finding them with the 
help of torches ; eight or ten of those nearest the fort 
they could not get. They then drew off and marched 
back to the Miami towns. At least twenty-five of them 
had been killed, and a great number wounded. They 
were much disheartened at the check, and the Upper 
I^ake Indians began to go home. 

Three weeks after the successful defence of Fort Re- 
covery, Wayne was joined by a large force of mounted 
volunteers from Kentucky, under General Scott ; and 
on July 27th he set out towards the Miami towns. The 
Indians who watched his march brought word to the 
British that his army went twice as far in a day as St. 
Clair's, that he kept his scouts well out and his troops 
always in open order and ready for battle ; that he ex- 
ercised the greatest precaution to avoid an ambush or 
surprise, and that every night the camps of the difier- 
ent regiments were surrounded by breastworks of fallen 
trees so as to render a sudden assault hopeless. 

Wa^aie showed his capacity as a commander by the 
use he made of his spies or scouts. It was on the fierce 
backwoods riflemen that he chiefly relied for news of 
the Indians ; and they served him well. As skilful 
and hardy as the red warriors, much better marksmen, 
and even more daring, they took many scalps, harrying 
the hunting parties, and hanging on the outskirts of 
the big wigwam villages. They captured and brought 
in Indian after Indian, from whom Wayne got valua- 
ble information. 

With his advance effectually covered by his scouts, 
and his army guarded by his own ceaseless vigilance, 
Wayne marched without opposition to the confluence 



214 The Winning of the West 

of the Glaize and the Maumee, where the hostile In- 
dian villages began, and whence they stretched to be- 
low the British fort. The savages were taken by 
surprise and fled without offering opposition ; while 
Wayne halted, on August 8th, and spent a week in 
building a strong log stockade, with four good block- 
houses as bastions ; he christened the work Fort 
Defiance. The Indians had cleared and tilled immense 
fields, and the troops revelled in the fresh vegetables 
and ears of roasted corn, and enjoyed the rest, for dur- 
ing the march the labor of cutting a road through 
the thick forest had been very severe, while the water 
was bad and the mosquitoes were exceedingly trouble- 
some. 

From Fort Defiance Wayne sent a final offer of peace 
to the Indians, summoning them at once to send depu- 
ties to meet him. The letter was carried by Christo- 
pher Miller, and a Shawnee prisoner ; and in it Wayne 
explained that Miller was a Shawnee by adoption, 
whom his soldiers had captured "six months since," 
while the Shawnee warrior had been taken but a couple 
of days before ; and he warned the Indians that he had 
seven Indian prisoners, who had been well treated, but 
who would be put to death if Miller were harmed. 
The Indians did not molest Miller, but sought to obtain 
delay, and would give no definite answer ; whereupon 
Wayne advanced against them, having laid waste and 
destroyed all their villages and fields. 

His army marched on the 15th, and on the i8th 
reached Roche du Bout, by the Maumee Rapids, only a 
few miles from the British fort. Next day was spent 
in building a rough breastwork to protect the stores and 
baggage and in reconnoitring the Indian position, 
which was close to the British. 



Mad Anthony Wayne 215 

On August 20, 1794, Wayne marched to battle 
against the Indians. They lay about six miles down 
the river, near the British fort, in a place known as the 
Fallen Timbers, because there the thick forest had been 
overturned by a whirlwind, and the dead trees lay piled 
across one another in rows. All the baggage was left 
behind in the breastwork, with a sufficient guard. The 
army numbered about three thousand men ; two thou- 
sand were regulars, and there were a thousand mounted 
volunteers from Kentucky under General Scott. 

The army marched down the left or north branch of 
the Maumee. A small force of mounted volunteers — ■ 
Kentucky militia — were in front. On the right flank 
the squadron of dragoons, the regular cavalry, marched 
next to the river. The infantry were formed in two 
long lines, the second some little distance behind the 
first ; the left of the first line being continued by 
the companies of regular riflemen and light troops. 
Scott, with the body of the mounted volunteers, was 
thrown out on the left with instructions to turn the 
flank of the Indians, thus effectually preventing them 
from performing a similar feat at the expense of the 
Americans. 

The Indians stretched in a line nearly two miles 
long at right angles to the river, and began the battle 
confidently enough. They attacked and drove in the 
volunteers who were in advance and the firing then be- 
gan along the entire front. But their success was 
momentary. Wayne ordered the first line of the in- 
fantry to advance with trailed arms, so as to rouse the 
savages from their cover, then to fire into their backs at 
close range, and to follow them hard with the bayonet, 
so as to give them no time to load. The regular cavalry 
were directed to charge the left flank of the enemy ; 



2i6 The Winning of the West 

for Wayne had determined " to put the horse-hoof on 
the moccasin." Both orders were executed with spirit 
and vigor. 

It would have been difficult to find more unfavorable 
ground for cavalry ; nevertheless the dragoons rode 
against their foes at a gallop, with broadswords swing- 
ing, the horses dodging in and out among the trees and 
jumping the fallen logs. They received a fire at close 
quarters which emptied a dozen saddles, both captains 
being shot down ; but they burst among the savages at 
full speed, and routed them in a moment. 

At the same time the first line of the infantry charged 
with equal impetuosity and success. The Indians de- 
livered one volley and were then roused from their 
hiding-places with the bayonet ; as they fled they were 
shot down, and if they attempted to halt they were at 
once assailed and again driven with the bayonet. They 
could make no stand at all, and the battle was won 
with ease. So complete was the success that only the 
first line of regulars was able to take part in the fight- 
ing ; the second line, and Scott's horse-riflemen on the 
left, in spite of their exertions, were unable to reach the 
battle-field until the Indians were driven from it ; 
"there not being a sufficiency of the enemy for the 
Legion to play on," wrote Clark. The entire action 
lasted under forty minutes. Less than a thousand of 
the Americans were actually engaged. They pursued 
the beaten and fleeing Indians for two miles, the 
cavalry halting only when under the walls of the British 
fort. 

Thirty-three of the Americans were killed and one 
hundred wounded. The Indians lost two or three 
times as many. It was the most complete and impor- 
tant victory ever gained over the northwestern Indians 



Mad Anthony Wayne 217 

during the forty years' warfare to which it put an end ; 
and it was the only considerable pitched battle in which 
they lost more than their foes. They suffered heavily 
among their leaders ; no less than eight Wyandot 
chiefs were slain. 

From the fort the British had seen, with shame and 
anger, the rout of their Indian allies. Their comman- 
der wrote to Waj'ne to demand his intentions. Wayne 
responded that he thought they were made sufficiently 
evident by his successful battle with the savages. 
The Englishman wrote in resentment of this curt reply, 
complaining that Wayne's soldiers had approached 
within pistol-shot of the fort, and threatening to fire 
upon them if the offence was repeated. Wayne re- 
sponded by summoning him to abandon the fort ; a 
summons which he of course refused to heed. Wayne 
then gave orders to destroy everything up to the very 
walls of the fort, and his commands were carried out to 
the letter ; not only were the Indian villages burned 
and their crops cut down, but all the houses and 
buildings of the British agents and traders, including 
McKee's, were levelled to the ground. The British 
commander did not dare to interfere or make good his 
threats ; nor, on the other hand, did Wayne dare to 
storm the fort, which was well built and heavily armed. 

After completing his work of destruction Wayne 
marched his army back to Fort Defiance. Here he 
was obliged to halt for over a fortnight while he sent 
back to Fort Recovery for provisions. He employed 
the time in work on the fort, which he strengthened so 
that it would stand an attack by a regular army. 

On September 14th the L,egion started westward to- 
wards the Miami towns at the junction of the St. 
Mary's and St. Joseph rivers, the scene of Harmar's 



2i8 The Winning of the West 

disaster. In four days the towns were reached, the 
Indians being too cowed to offer resistance. Here the 
army spent six weeks, burned the towns and destroyed 
the fields and stores of the hostile tribes, and built a 
fort which was christened Fort Wayne. The mounted 
volunteers grew mutinous, but were kept in order by 
their commander, Scott, a rough, capable backwoods 
soldier. Their term of service at length expired and 
they were sent home ; and the regulars of the I^egion, 
leaving a garrison at Fort Wayne, marched back to 
Greeneville, and reached it on November 2d, just 
three months and six days after they started from it on 
their memorable and successful expedition. Wayne 
had shown himself the best general ever sent to war 
with the northwestern Indians ; and his victorious 
campaign was the most noteworthy ever carried on 
against them, for it brought about the first lasting 
peace on the border. It was one of the most striking 
and weighty feats in the winning of the West. 

The battle of the Fallen Timbers opened the eyes of 
the Indians to the fact that, though the British would 
urge them to fight, and would secretly aid them, yet in 
the last resort the King's troops would not come to 
their help by proceeding to actual war. Accordingly 
all their leaders recognized that it was time to make 
peace. 

In November the Wyandots from Sandusky sent am- 
bassadors to Wayne at Greeneville. Wayne spoke to 
them with his usual force and frankness. He told them 
he pitied them for their folly in listening to the British, 
who were very glad to urge them to fight and to give 
them ammunition, but who had neither the power nor 
the inclination to help them, when the time of trial 
came : that hitherto the Indians had felt only the 



Mad Anthony Wayne 219 

weiglit of his little finger, but that he would surely de- 
stroy all the tribes in the near future, if they did not 
make peace. They went away much surprised, and 
resolved on peace ; and the other tribes followed their 
example. 

This was followed in the summer of 1795 by the for- 
mal Treaty of Greeneville, at which Wayne, on behalf 
of the United States, made a definite peace with all the 
northwestern tribes. No less than eleven hundred and 
thirty Indians were present at the treaty grounds, in- 
cluding a full delegation from every hostile tribe. All 
solemnly covenanted to keep the peace ; and they 
agreed to surrender to the whites all of what is now 
southern Ohio and southeastern Indiana, and various 
reservations elsewhere, as at Fort Wayne, Fort Defiance, 
Detroit, and Michilimackinac, the lands around the 
French towns, and the hundred and fifty thousand 
acres near the Falls of the Ohio, which had been allotted 
to Clark and his soldiers. The Government, in its 
turn, acknowledged the Indian title to the remaining 
territory, and agreed to pay the tribes annuities aggre- 
gating nine thousand five hundred dollars. All pris- 
oners on both sides were restored. 

Wayne had brought peace by the sword. It was the 
first time the border had been quiet for over a genera- 
tion ; and for fifteen years the quiet lasted unbroken. 



CHAPTER XXII 
the; purchase; of Louisiana, 1803 

THE growth of the West was very rapid in the years 
immediately succeeding the peace with the In- 
dians and the treaties with England and Spain. As 
the settlers poured into what had been the Indian- 
haunted wilderness it speedily became necessary to cut 
it into political divisions. Kentucky had already been 
admitted as a State in 1 792 ; Tennessee likewise became 
a State in 1796, and the Territory of Mississippi was 
organized in 1798 to include the country west of Geor- 
gia and south of Tennessee, which had been ceded by 
the Spaniards under Pinckney's treaty. 

Statesmen and diplomats have some share in shaping 
the conditions under which a country is finally taken ; 
in the eye of history they often usurp much more than 
their proper share ; but in reality the}'- are able to bring 
matters to a conclusion only because adventurous set- 
tlers, in defiance or disregard of governmental action, 
have pressed forward into the longed-for land. The 
vital question as to whether the land shall be taken at 
all, upon no matter what terms, is answered not by the 
diplomats, but by the people themselves. The settlers 
had already thronged into the disputed territories or 
strenuously pressed forward against their boundaries. 

So it was with the acquisition of lyouisiana, which 
was to be the next step in the winning of the West. 



The Purchase of Louisiana 221 

Jefferson, lyivingston, and their fellow-statesmen and 
diplomats concluded the treaty which determined the 
manner in which it came into our possession ; but they 
did not really have much to do with fixing the terms 
even of this treaty ; for the Americans would have won 
the region in any event. The real history of the acqui- 
sition of lyouisiana is the story of the great westward 
movement begun in 1769. 

The Spanish rulers realized fully that they were too 
weak effectively to cope with the Americans, and, as the 
pressure upon them grew ever heavier and more men- 
acing, they began to fear not only for Ivouisiana but also 
for Mexico. They clung tenaciously to all their pos- 
sessions ; but they were willing to sacrifice a part, if by 
so doing they could erect a barrier for the defence of 
the remainder. The needs of the Spaniards seemed to 
Napoleon his opportunity. By the bribe of a petty Ital- 
ian principality he persuaded the Bourbon King of 
Spain to cede Ivouisiana to the French, at the treaty of 
San Ildefonso, concluded in October, 1800. The ces- 
sion was agreed to by the Spaniards on the express % 
pledge that the territory should not be transferred to 
any other power, and chiefly for the purpose of erect- 
ing a barrier which might stay the American advance, 
and protect the rest of the Spanish possessions. 

Every effort was made to keep the cession from being 
made public, and owing to various political complica- 
tions it was not consummated for a couple of years ; 
but meanwhile it was impossible to prevent rumors 
from going abroad, and the mere hint of such a project 
was enough to throw the West into a fever of excite- 
ment. 

Kven Jefferson, the least warlike of presidents, could 
see that for France to take lyouisiana meant war 



222 The Winning of the West 

with the Uuited States sooner or later ; and as, above 
all things else, he desired peace he made every effort to 
secure the coveted territory by purchase. 

It was, however, no argument of Jefferson's or of the 
American diplomats, lyivingston and Monroe, but the 
inevitable trend of events that finally brought about a 
change in Napoleon's mind. The army he sent to 
Hayti wasted away by disease and in combat with the 
blacks, and thereby not only diminished the forces he 
intended to throw into Louisiana, but also gave him a 
terrible object lesson as to what the fate of these forces 
was certain ultimately to be. The attitude of England 
and Austria grew steadily more hostile, and his most 
trustworthy advisers impressed on Napoleon's mind 
the steady growth of the Western-American communi- 
ties, and the implacable hostility with which they were 
certain to regard any power that seized or attempted to 
hold New Orleans. So I^ivingston was astonished to 
find that Napoleon had suddenly changed front, and 
that there was every prospect of gaining what for 
months had seemed impossible. For some time there 
was haggling over the terms. Napoleon, having once 
made up his mind to part with I^ouisiana, rapidly 
abated his demands ; and the cession was finally made 
for fifteen millions of dollars. 

Meanwhile in March, 1803, the French Prefect, 
lyaussat, arrived to take possession of lyouisiana for his 
own government. He had no idea that Napoleon in- 
tended to cede it to the United States. On the contrary, 
he showed that he regarded the French as the heirs, 
not only to the Spanish territory, but of the Spanish 
hostility to the Americans, and he made all his prepara- 
tions as if New Orleans was to become the centre of an 
aggressive military government. There was much 



The Purchase of Louisiana 223 

friction between him and the Spanish officials ; he 
complained bitterly to the home government of the in- 
solence and intrigues of the Spanish party. He also 
portrayed in scathing terms the gross corruption of the 
Spanish authorities. 

I^aussat soon discovered with chagrin that he was 
to turn the country over to the Americans almost 
immediately. This change in the French attitude 
greatly increased the friction with the Spaniards. The 
Spanish home government was furious with indignation 
at Napoleon for having violated his word, and only the 
weakness of Spain prevented war between it and France. 
It was not until December i, 1803, that Laussat took 
final possession of the provinces. Twenty days after- 
wards he turned them over to the American authorities. 

Naturally there was a fertile field for seditious agita- 
tion in New Orleans, a city of mixed population, where 
the numerically predominant race felt a puzzled distrust 
for the nation of which it suddenly found itself an in- 
tegral part, and from past experience firmly believed 
in the evanescent nature of any political connection it 
might have, whether with Spain, France, or the United 
States. The Creoles murmured because they were not 
given the same privileges as American citizens in the 
old States, and yet showed themselves indifferent to 
such privileges as they were given. They were indig- 
nant because the National Government prohibited the 
importation of slaves into lyouisiana, and for the mo- 
ment even the transfer thither of slaves from the old 
States. Representatives of the French and Spanish 
governments still remained in Louisiana, and by their 
presence and their words tended to keep alive a dis- 
affection for the United States Government. 

Furthermore, there already existed in New Orleans a 



2 24 The Winning of the West 

very peculiar class, later known as filibusters. They 
were men ready at any time to enter into any plot 
for armed conquest of one of the Spanish-American 
countries. They did not care in the least what form 
the expedition took. They were willing to join the 
Mexican exiles in an effort t'o rouse Mexico to throw 
off the 3^oke of Spain, or to aid any province of Mexico 
to revolt from the rest, or to help the leaders of any de- 
feated faction who wished to try an appeal to arms. 

Under such conditions New Orleans, even more than 
the rest of the West, seemed to offer an inviting field 
for adventurers whose aim was both revolutionary and 
piratical. A particularly spectacular adventurer of this 
type now appeared in the person of Aaron Burr. His 
career had been striking. He had been Vice-President 
of the United States. He had lacked but one vote of 
being made President, when the election of 1800 was 
thrown into the House of Representatives. As friend or 
as enemy he had been thrown intimately and on equal 
terms with the greatest political leaders of the day. 
There was not a man in the country who did not know 
about the brilliant and unscrupulous party leader who 
had killed Hamilton, and who by a nearly successful 
intrigue had come within otte vote of defeating Jeffer- 
son for the presidency. 

In New York Aaron Burr had shown himself as 
adroit as he was unscrupulous in the use of all the arts 
of the machine manager. In the State he was the 
leader of the Democratic party, which under his lead 
crushed the Federalists ; and as a reward he was given 
the second highest office in the nation. Then his open 
enemies and secret rivals all combined against him. 
He made an obstinate fight to hold his own ; but he 
was hopelessly beaten. Both his fortune and his local 



The Purchase of Louisiana 225 

political prestige were ruined ; he realized that his 
chance for a career in New York was over. 

He was, however, a statesman of national reputation ; 
and he turned his restless eyes toward the West, which 
for a score of years had seethed in a turmoil out of 
which it seemed that a bold spirit might make its own 
profit. He had already been obscurely connected with 
separatist intrigues in the Northeast ; and he deter- 
mined to embark in similar intrigues on an infinitely 
grander scale in the West and Southwest. 

It is small wonder that the conspiracy of which such 
a man was head should make a noise out of all propor- 
tion to its real weight. The conditions were such 
that if Burr journeyed west he was certain to attract 
universal attention and to be received with marked 
enthusiasm. No man of his prominence in national 
affairs had ever travelled through the wild new common- 
wealths on the Mississippi. The men who were found- 
ing states and building towns on the wreck of the 
conquered wilderness were sure to be flattered by the 
appearance of so notable a man among them, and to be 
impressed not only by his reputation, but by his 
charm of manner and brilliancy of intellect. 

But the time for separatist movements in the West 
had passed, while the time for arousing the West to 
the conquest of part of Spanish- America had hardly 
3^et come. With the purchase of I^ouisiana all deep- 
lying causes of Western discontent had vanished. The 
West was prosperous, and was attached to the 
National Government. Its leaders might still enjoy a 
discussion with Burr or among themselves concerning 
separatist principles in the abstract, but nobody of any 
weight in the community would allow such plans as 
those of Burr to be put into efiect. 

IS 



226 The Winning of the West 

Burr's career, however, was already ruined. Jeffer- 
son had issued a proclamation for his arrest ; and even 
before this, the fabric of the conspiracy had crumbled 
into shifting dust. There was no real support for Burr 
anywhere. All his plot had been but a dream ; at the 
last he could not do anything which justified, in even 
the smallest degree, the alarm and curiosity he had 
excited. He was put on trial for high treason, but he 
was acquitted on a technicality. 



CHAPTER XXIII 

THE EXPLORERS OF THE FAR WEST, 1804-1807 

THE Far West, the West beyond the Mississippi, 
had been thrust on JeflFerson, and given to the 
nation, by the rapid growth of the Old West, the West 
that lay between the Alleghanies and the Mississippi. 
The next step was to explore this territory thus newly 
added to the national domain, for nobody knew much 
about it. 

The first of several expeditions to explore this vast 
region was planned by Jefferson himself and author- 
ized by Congress. Nominally its purpose was to find 
out the most advantageous places for the establishment 
of trading stations with the Indian tribes ; but in 
reality it was purel}^ a voyage of exploration, planned 
with intent to ascend the Missouri to its head, and 
thence to cross the continent to the Pacific. The ex- 
plorers were carefully instructed to report upon the 
geography, physical characteristics, and zoology of 
the region traversed, as well as upon its wild human 
denizens. 

The two ofiicers chosen to carry through the work 
belonged to families already honorably distinguished 
for service on the Western border. One was Captain 
Meriwether lyCwis, representatives of whose family had 
served so prominently in Dunmore's war ; the other 
was lyieutenant William Clark, a younger brother of 

227 



228 The Winning of the West 

George Rogers Clark. Clark had served with credit 
through Wayne's campaigns, and had taken part in 
the victory of the Fallen Timbers. I,ewis had seen 
his first service when he enlisted as a private in the 
forces which were marshalled to put down the whisky 
insurrection. Later he served under Clark in Wayne's 
army. He had also been President Jefferson's private 
secretary. 

The young officers started on their trip accompanied 
by twenty-seven men who intended to make the whole 
journey. Of this number one, the interpreter and in- 
cidentally the best hunter in the party, was a half- 
breed ; two were French voyageurs, one was a negro 
servant of Clark, nine were volunteers from Kentucky, 
and fourteen were regular soldiers. All, however, ex- 
cept the black slave, were enlisted in the army before 
starting, so that they might be kept under regular 
discipline. In addition to these twenty-seven men 
there were seven soldiers and nine voyageurs who 
started to go only to the Mandan villages on the 
Missouri, where the party intended to spend the first 
winter. They embarked in three large boats, abun- 
dantly supplied with arms, powder, and lead, clothing, 
gifts for the Indians, and provisions. 

From St. Louis the explorers pushed off in May, 
1804, and soon began stemming the strong current of 
the muddy Missouri, to whose unknown sources they 
intended to ascend. For two or three weeks they 
occasionally passed farms and hamlets — the most im- 
portant being St. Charles, where the people were all 
Creoles. The explorers in their journal commented 
upon the good temper and vivacity of these habitayits, 
but dwelt on the shiftlessness they displayed and their 
readiness to sink back towards savagery, although 



The Explorers of the Far West 229 

they were brave and hardy enough. The next most 
considerable town was peopled mainly by Americans ; 
while the last squalid little village they passed claimed 
as one of its occasional residents old Daniel Boone 
himself. 

As the party gradually worked its way northwest- 
ward, it began to come upon those characteristic 
animals of the Great Plains — the buffalo and elk in 
astounding numbers ; the pronghorned antelope, the 
blacktail deer, the coyotes, whose uncanny wailing 
after nightfall varied the sinister baying of the gray 
wolves ; and notably the prairie dogs, whose populous 
villages awakened the lively curiosity of Lewis and 
Clark. 

In their note-books the two captains faithfully de- 
scribed all these new animals and all the strange sights 
they saw in a narrative singularly accurate and entirely 
free from boastfulness and exaggeration. But what was 
of greater importance, the two young captains kept 
good discipline among the men ; they never hesitated 
to punish severely any wrong-doer ; but they were 
never over-severe ; and as they did their full part of the 
work, and ran all the risks and suffered all the hard- 
ship exactly like the other members of the expedition, 
they were regarded by their followers with devoted af- 
fection, and were served with loyalty and cheerfulness. 

With all the Indian tribes the two explorers held 
councils, and distributed presents, especially medals, 
among the head chiefs and warriors, informing them 
of the transfer of the territory from Spain to the United 
States. The Indians all professed much satisfaction at -^ 
the change, which of course they did not in the lesat *^i^ 
understand, and for which they cared nothing. This 
easy acquiescence gave much groundless satisfaction to 



230 The Winning of the West 

Lewis and Clark, who further strove to make each 
tribe swear peace with its neighbors. After some hesi- 
tation the tribes usually consented to this, and as 
promptly went to war again, for in reality the Indians 
had only the vaguest idea as to what was meant by 
the ceremonies and the hoisting of the American 
flag. 

As the fall weather grew cold, the party reached the 
Mandan village, where they halted and went into camp 
for the winter, building huts and a stout stockade, 
which they christened Fort Mandan. 

In the spring of 1805, Lewis and Clark again started 
westward, first sending down-stream ten of their com- 
panions, to carry home the notes of their trip so far 
and a few valuable specimens. The party that started 
westward numbered thirty-two adults all told ; for one 
sergeant had died, and two or three persons had volun- 
teered at the Mandan villages, including a rather worth- 
less French "squaw-man," with an intelligent Indian 
wife, whose baby was but a few weeks old. 

From the Little Missouri on to the head of the Mis- 
souri proper the explorers passed through a region lit- 
erally swarming with game. In their journals they 
dwelt continually on the innumerable herds they en- 
countered both while travelling up-stream and again 
the following year when they were returning. Ordi- 
narily all the kinds of game were very tame. Sometimes 
one of the many herds of elk that lay boldly, even at 
midday, on the sand-bars, or on the brush-covered 
points, would wait until the explorers were within 
twenty yards of them before starting. The buffalo 
would scarcely move out of the path at all, and the 
bulls sometimes, even when unmolested, threatened to 
assail the hunters. Once, on the return voyage, when 



The Explorers of the Far West 231 

Clark was descending the Yellowstone River, a vast 
herd of buffalo, swimming and wading, plowed its way 
across the stream where it was a mile broad, in a col- 
umn so thick that the explorers had to draw up on 
shore and wait for an hour, until it passed by, before 
continuing their journey. Two or three times the ex- 
pedition was thus brought to a halt ; and as the buffalo 
were so plentiful, and so easy to kill, and as their flesh 
was very good, they were the mainstay for the explor- 
ers' table. Both going and returning this wonderful 
hunting country was a place of plenty. 

There was one kind of game which they at times 
found altogether too familiar. This was the grizzly 
bear. They found that the Indians greatly feared 
these bears, and after their first encounters they them- 
selves treated them with much respect. Again and 
again these huge bears attacked the explorers of their 
own accord, when neither molested nor threatened. 
They galloped after the hunters when they met them on 
horseback even in the open ; and they attacked them 
just as freely when they found them on foot. To go 
through the brush was dangerous ; again and again 
one or another of the party was charged and forced to 
take to a tree, at the foot of which the bear sometimes 
mounted guard for hours before going off". When 
wounded, the beasts fought with desperate courage, and 
showed astonishing tenacity of life, charging any num- 
ber of assailants, and succumbing but slowly even to 
mortal wounds. In one case a bear that was on shore 
actually plunged into the water and swam out to at- 
tack one of the canoes as it passed. 

As they journeyed up-stream through the bright 
summer weather, though they worked hard, it was 
work of a kind which was but a long holiday. At 



232 The Winning of the West 

nightfall they camped by the boats on the river bank. 
Kach day some of the party spent in hunting, either 
along the river-bottoms through the groves of cotton- 
woods with shimmering, rustling leaves, or away from 
the river where the sunny prairies stretched into seas 
of brown grass, or where groups of rugged hills stood, 
fantastic in color and outline, and with stunted pines 
growing on the sides of their steep ravines. The only 
real suffering was that which occasionally befell some- 
one who got lost, and was out for days at a time, until 
he exhausted all his powder and lead before finding the 
party. 

Fall had nearly come when they reached the head- 
waters of the Missouri. The end of the holiday-time 
was at hand, for they had before them the labor of 
crossing the great mountains so as to strike the head- 
waters of the Columbia. Their success at this point 
depended somewhat upon the Indian wife of the 
Frenchman who had joined them at Mandan. She 
had been captured from one of the Rocky Mountain 
tribes, and they relied on her as interpreter. Partly 
through her aid, and partly by their own exertions, 
they were able to find, and make friends with, a band 
of wandering Shoshones, from whom they got horses. 
Having cached their boats and most of their goods they 
started westward through the forest-clad passes of the 
Rockies, where the game was far less abundant than 
on the plains and far harder to kill. The work was 
hard, and the party suffered much from toil and hun- 
ger before they struck one of the tributaries of the 
Snake sufiiciently low down to enable them once more 
to go by boat. 

They now met many Indians of various tribes, all of 
them very difierent from the Indians of the western 



The Explorers of the Far West 233 

plains. At this time the Indians, both east and west 
of the Rockies, already owned numbers of horses. Al- 
though they had a few guns, they relied mainly on the 
spears and tomahawks, and the bows and arrows with 
which they had warred and hunted from time im- 
memorial. Around the mouth of the Columbia, how- 
ever, the explorers found that the Indians knew a good 
deal about the whites ; the river had been discovered 
by Captain Gray of Boston thirteen years before, and 
ships came there continually; while some of the Indian 
tribes were occasionally visited by traders from the 
British fur companies. 

With one or two of these tribes the explorers had 
some diflSculty, and owed their safety to their unceas- 
ing vigilance, and to the prompt decision with which 
they gave the Indians to understand that they would 
tolerate no bad treatment, while they themselves re- 
frained carefully from committing any wrong. By 
most of the tribes they were well received, and obtained 
from them not only information of the route, but also a 
welcome supply of food. At first they rather shrank 
from eating the dogs which formed the favorite dish of 
the Indians ; but after a while they grew quite recon- 
ciled to dog's flesh ; and in their journals noted that 
they preferred it to lean elk and deer meat, and were 
much more healthy while eating it. 

They had reached the Pacific coast before cold 
weather set in, and there they passed the winter. In 
March, 1806, they started eastward to retrace their 
steps. At first they did not live well, for it was before 
the time when the salmon came up-stream, and game 
was not common. When they reached the snow-cov- 
ered mountains, there came another period of toil and 
starvation, and they were glad indeed when they 



234 The Winning of the West 

emerged once more on the happy hunting-grounds 
of the Great Plains. They found their caches undis- 
turbed. Early in July they separated for a time, 
Clark descending the Yellowstone and Lewis the 
Missouri, until they met at the junction of the two 
rivers. The party which went down the Yellowstone 
at one time split into two, Clark taking command of 
one division, and a sergeant of the other ; they built 
their own canoes, some of them made out of hollowed 
trees, while the others were bull boats, made of buffalo 
hides stretched on a frame. 

To Lewis there befell several adventures. Once, 
while he was out with three men, a party of eight 
Blackfoot warriors joined them and suddenly made a 
treacherous attack upon them and strove to carry off 
their guns and horses. But the wilderness veterans 
sprang to arms with a readiness that had become 
second nature. One of them killed an Indian with a 
knife thrust ; Lewis himself shot another Indian, and 
the remaining six fled, carrying with them one of 
Lewis' horses, but losing four of their own, which the 
whites captured. This was the beginning of the long 
series of bloody skirmishes between the Blackfeet and 
the Rocky Mountain explorers and trappers. Clark, 
at about the same time, suffered at the hands of the 
Crows, who stole a number of his horses. 

None of the party was hurt by the Indians, but, some 
time after the skirmish with the Blackfeet, Lewis was 
accidentally shot by one of the Frenchmen of the party 
and suffered much from the wound. Near the mouth 
of the Yellowstone Clark joined him, and the reunited 
company floated down the Missouri. Before they 
reached the Mandan villages they encountered two 
white men, the first strangers of their own color the 



The Explorers of the Far West 235 

party had seen for a year and a half. These were two 
American hunters named Dickson and Hancock, who 
were going up to trap along the head-waters of the 
Missouri on their own account. They had come from 
the Illinois country a year before, to hunt and trap ; 
they had been plundered, and one of them wounded, 
in an encounter with the fierce Sioux, but were un- 
dauntedly pushing forwards into the unknown wilder- 
ness towards the mountains. 

These two hard}^ and daring adventurers formed the 
vanguard of the bands of hunters and trappers, the 
famous Rocky Mountain men, who were to roam hither 
and thither across the great West in lawless freedom 
for the next three quarters of a centur5\ They accom- 
panied the party back to the Mandan village ; there 
Colter, one of the soldiers, joined them, so fascinated by 
the life of the wilderness that he was not willing to 
leave it. He proved to be the first to explore Yellow- 
stone Park. The three turned their canoe up-stream, 
while lyewis and Clark and the rest of the party drifted 
down past the Sioux, and after an uneventful voyage 
reached St. lyouis in September, and forwarded to 
Jefferson an account of what the)^ had done. 

Close on their tracks followed the hunters, trappers, 
and fur traders who themselves made ready the way for 
the settlers whose descendants were to possess the land. 
As for the two leaders of the explorers, I^ewis was soon Q 
made Governor of I^ouisiana Territory ; and Clark was , 
afterwards Governor of the same territory, when its 
name had been changed to Missouri. Neither of them 
did anything further of note ; nor indeed was it neces- 
sary, for they had performed a feat which will always 
give them a place on the honor roll of American 
worthies. 



236 The Winning of the West 

While Lewis and Clark were recrossing the continent 
from the Pacific coast, another army oflScer was con- 
ducting explorations which were only less important 
than theirs. This was L,ieut. Zebulon Montgomery 
Pike. He was not by birth a Westerner, being from 
New Jersey, the son of an ofl&cer of the Revolutionary 
army ; but his name will always be indelibly associated 
with the West. 

Setting out from St. Louis in August, 1805, Pike 
turned his face towards the head-waters of the Missis- 
sippi, his purpose being both to explore the sources of 
that river, and to show to the Indians, and to the Brit- 
ish fur traders among them, that the United States was 
sovereign over the country in fact as well as in theory. 
He started in a large keel boat, with twenty soldiers of 
the regular army. He and his regulars were forced to 
be their own pioneers and to do their own hunting, un- 
til, by dint of hard knocks and hard work, they grew 
experts, both as riflemen and woodsmen. 

The expedition occasionally encountered parties of 
Indians. Pike handled them well, and speedily brought 
those with whom he came into contact to a proper frame 
of mind, showing good temper and at the same time 
prompt vigor in putting down any attempt at bullying. 
On the journey up-stream only one misadventure be- 
fell the party. A couple of the men got lost while 
hunting and did not find the boat for six days, by 
which time they were nearly starved, having used up 
all their ammunition, so that they could not shoot 
game. The winter was spent in what is now Minne- 
sota. Pike made a permanent camp, where he kept 
most of his men, while he himself travelled hither and 
thither, using dog sleds after the snow fell. They 
lived on game : Pike, after the first enthusiasm of the 



The Explorers of the Far West 237 

sport had palled a little, commented on the hard slavery 
of a hunter's life and its vicissitudes ; for on one day he 
might kill enough meat to last the whole partj'^ a week 
and, when that was exhausted, they might go three or 
four days without anything at all. 

In his search for the source of the Mississippi he 
penetrated deep into the lovely lake-dotted region of 
forests and prairies which surrounds the head-waters 
of the river. He did not reach Lake Itasca ; but he 
did explore the lycech I^ake drainage system, which 
he mistook for the true source. In the spring he 
floated down-stream and reached St. Louis on the last 
day of April, 1806. 

In July he was again sent out, this time on a far more 
dangerous and important trip. He was to march west 
to the Rocky Mountains, and explore the country 
towards the head of the Rio Grande, where the bound- 
ary line between Mexico and Louisiana was very 
vaguely determined. His party, numbering twenty- 
three all told, was accompanied by fifty Osage Indians, 
chiefly women and children who had been captured by 
the Pottawattamies, and whose release and return to 
their homes had been brought about by the efibrts of 
the United States Government. The presence of these 
redeemed captives of course kept the Osages in good 
humor with Pike's party. 

The party ascended the Osage River as far as it was 
navigable. They then procured horses and travelled to 
the great Pawnee village known as the Pawnee Repub- 
lic, which gave its name to the Republican River. A 
Spanish military expedition, several hundred strong, 
had anticipated them, by travelling through the debat- 
able land, and by seeking to impress upon the Indians 
that the power of the Spanish nation was still supreme. 



238 The Winning of the West 

Pike, however, had small difficulty in getting the 
chiefs and warriors of the village to hoist the American 
flag instead of the Spanish ones that had just been left 
with them. But they showed a very decided disin- 
clination to let him continue his journey westward. 
With perfect good temper, he gave them to understand 
that he would use force if they ventured to bar his pas- 
sage ; and they finally let him go by. Later he had a 
somewhat similar experience with a large Pawnee war 
party. 

The explorers had now left behind them the fertile, 
tree-clad country, and had entered on the Great Plains, 
across which they journeyed to the Arkansas, and then 
up that river. All the early travellers seem to have 
been almost equally impressed by the interminable seas 
of grass, the strange, shifting rivers, and the swarm- 
ing multitudes of the huge, shaggy-maned bison. No 
other wild animal of the same size, in any part of the 
world, existed in such incredible numbers. 

When the party reached the Arkansas late in October, 
four or five of the men journeyed down it and returned 
to the settled country. The others struck westward 
into the mountains, and late in November reached the 
neighborhood of the bold peak which was later named 
after Pike himself. 

When winter set in with great severity soon after- 
wards, the blacktail deer, upon which the party had 
begun to rely for meat, migrated to the wintering 
grounds, and the explorers suffered even more from 
hunger than from cold. The horses suffered most ; the 
extreme toil and scant pasturage weakened them so 
that some died from exhaustion and others fell over 
precipices. 

Early in January, near the site of the present Canyon 



The Explorers of the Far West 239 

City, Pike found a valley where deer were plentiful. 
From here he himself, with a dozen of the hardiest sol- 
diers, struck through the mountains towards the Rio 
Grande. In the Wet Mountain vallej', which they 
reached in raid-January, 1807, starvation stared them in 
the face. There had been a heavy snowstorm ; no game 
was to be seen ; and they had been two days without 
food. Nine of the men, exhausted by hunger, could 
no longer travel on account of frozen feet. Two of the 
soldiers went out to hunt, but got nothing. At the 
same time, Pike and a Dr. Robinson started, deter- 
mined, unless they could bring back meat, to stay out 
and die by themselves, rather than to go back to camp 
"and behold the misery of our poor lads." All day 
they tramped wearily through the heavy snow. To- 
wards evening they came on a buffalo, and wounded 
it ; but, faint and weak from hunger, they shot badly, 
and the buffalo escaped — a disappointment literally as 
bitter as death. That night they sat up among some 
rocks unable to sleep because of the intense cold, 
shivering in their thin rags. But they were men of 
indomitable spirit, and next day, trudging painfully on, 
they at last succeeded, after another heartbreaking 
failure, in killing a buffalo. At midnight they stag- 
gered into camp with the meat, and all the party broke 
their four-days' fast. 

After leaving this valley Pike and his men finally 
reached the Rio Grande, where the weather was milder 
and deer abounded. Here they built a little fort over 
which they flew the United States flag, though Pike 
well knew that he was in Spanish territory. When 
the Spanish commander at Santa Fe learned of their 
presence he promptly sent out a detachment of troops 
to bring them in, showing great courtesy, and elabo- 



240 The Winning of the West 

rately pretending to believe that Pike had merely lost 
his way. 

From Santa Fe Pike was sent home by a round- 
about route through Chihuahua, and through Texas. 
Being used to the simplicity of his own service, he was 
struck by the extravagance and luxury of the Spanish 
officers, who always travelled with sumpter-mules laden 
with delicacies ; and he was no less struck with the 
laxity of discipline in all ranks. The Spanish cavalry 
were armed with lances and shields ; the militia carried 
not only old-fashioned carbines but lassos and bows and 
arrows. There was small wonder that the Spanish 
authorities, civil, military, and ecclesiastical alike, 
should wish to keep intruders out of the land, and 
should jealously guard the secret of their own weak- 
ness. 



While; these first rough explorations of the Far West 
were taking place, the Old West was steadily filling with 
population and becoming more and more a coherent 
portion of the Union. In the treaties made from time 
with the northwestern Indians, they ceded so much 
land that at last the entire northern bank of the Ohio 
was in the hands of the settlers. But the Indians still 
held northwestern Ohio and the northern portions of 
what are now Indiana and Illinois, so that the settle- 
ment at Detroit was quite isolated ; as were the few 
little stockades, or groups of fur- trader's huts, in what 
are now northern Illinois and Wisconsin. The south- 
ern Indians also surrendered much territory, in various 
treaties. Georgia got control of much of the Indian 
land within her State limits. All the country between 
Knoxville and Nashville became part of Tennessee, so 



The Explorers of the Far West 241 

that the eastern and middle portions of the State were 
no longer sundered by a jutting fragment of wilderness, 
infested by Indian war parties whenever there were 
hostilities with the savages. The only Indian lands 
in Tennessee or Kentucky were those held by the 
Chickasaws, between the Tennessee and the Mis- 
sissippi ; and the Chickasaws were friendly to the 
Americans. 

Year by year the West grew better able to defend 
itself, if attacked, and more formidable in the event of 
its being necessary to undertake offensive warfare. 
Kentucky and Tennessee had become populous States, 
no longer fearing Indian inroads ; but able, on the con- 
trary, to equip powerful armies for the aid of the settlers 
in the more scantily peopled regions north and south 
of them. Ohio was also growing steadily ; and in the 
territory of Indiana, including what is now Illinois, 
and the territory of Mississippi, including what is now 
northern Alabama, there were already many settlers. 



During the dozen years which opened with Wayne's 
campaign, saw the treaties of Jay and Pinckney, and 
closed with the explorations of I^ewis, Clark, and 
Pike, the West had grown with the growth of a giant, 
and for the first time had achieved peace. The terri- 
tories which had been won by war from the Indians 
and by treaty from Spain, France, and England, and 
which had been partially explored, were not yet en- 
tirely our own. Much had been accomplished by the 
deeds of the Indian-fighters, treaty-makers, and wilder- 
ness-wanderers ; far more had been accomplished by 
the steady push of the settler folk themselves, as they 
thrust ever westward, and carved states out of the 



242 The Winning of the West 

forest and prairie ; but mucli yet remained to be done 
before the West would reach its natural limits and 
would fill from frontier to frontier with populous com- 
monwealths of its own citizens. 




WmE 6" A* 



WlNMNG OF THE \\Esr. Vol. 1. G. p. Putnam's Sons, New York and London. 

THE WEST DURING THE REVOLUTION. 

Showing Hamillon's route from Detroit to Vincennes ; Clark's route from Redstone to tne Illinois, and thence to Vincennes ; Boon's trail, on the Wilderness 
Road to Kentucl<y ; Robertson's trail to the settlement he founded on the Cumberland ; the water route from the Watauga to Nashboro, that taken by tlie Adventure , 
the march of the backwoodsmen from the Sycamore Shoals to King's Mountain. 

The flags denote the battles of the Great Kanawha, the Blue Licks, the Island Flats of the Holston, and King's Mountain ; and the assaults on Boonsboro and 
N'incennes. 



1 



INDEX 



Abingdon, 132-3. 
Adventure, the, 136-8. 
Alabama, 241. 
Alexandria, 132. 
Algonquins, the, 3-5, 17, 18, 

82. 
Alleghanies, 2, 8, 17, 26, 95, 

140, 227. 
Appalachian Confederation, i- 

3. 17. 
Arkansas, 238. 
Army, the regular, 5, 149, 189- 

205, 210-219. 

Backwoodsmen, 8-16, 32-41, 

97, 1 12-126. 
Baltimore, 132, 
Big Bone Lick, the, 22. 
Blackfeet, 234. 
Bledsoe's Station, 139, 140. 
Blue Ivicks, 52, 59, 97-101. 
Boiling Spring's Station, 46. 
Boone's Creek, 19. 
Boone, Daniel, 18-21, 23, 32, 

42-8, 52-6, 97-100, 117, 150- 

I, 167, 229. 
Boone, Squire, 20. 
Boonsborough, 44-5, 52, 94, 

102, 146, 166. 
Boston, 182. 
Bradford, John, 176. 
Brandy wine, no, 209. 
Brant, Joseph, 208-9. 
British, the, 49-51, 61, 83, 94, 

109, no, 217. 
Brown, 175. 
Bryan's Station, 95-7. 
Burr, Aaron, 225-6. 



Butler, Richard, Gen., 197-9. 
Butler (trader), 28. 

Cahokia, 67, 68-71, 83. 
Caldwell, Captain, 91, 95. 
Callahan, Edward, 133. 
Callaway, Betsey, 56. 
Campbell, Arthur, 127. 
Campbell, William, ii2, 115, 

118-124, 127. 
Canyon City, 238. 
Carolina, North, 9, 18, 48, 104- 

6, 113, 115, 117, 130, 132, 

134-5, 152-165, 177, 182. 
Carolina, South, 109, iii, 117, 

182. 
Charleston, 9, 10, 109, in. 
Cherokees, 1-3, 18, 28, 43, 104, 

107-8, no, 118, 127, 129, 130, 

132, 136, 156, 161-3. 
Chickamaugas, 130, 138, 161- 

3- 
Chickasaws, i, 2, 18, 132, 143, 

197, 241. 
Chihuahua, 240. 
Chillicothe, 32, 58. 
Chippewas, 4, 86. 
Choctaws, 1-3, 143. 
Chota, 130, 162. 
Clark, George Rogers, 42, 48, 

60-71, 74-84, 95, loi, 103, 

135, 148-9. 169, 170, 173, 194, 

212, 228. 
Clark, William, Capt., 212, 

216, 219, 227, 229, 230-6, 

241. 
Cleavland, Benjamin, Col., 

113-114, 119, 121. 



343 



244 



Index 



Clinch River, 23-4. 

Clover Bottom, 139. 

Colter, 235. 

Columbia, 232-3. 

Congress, 40, 152, 153, 156, 

164, 173-186, 190, 194-5, 

206. 
Connecticut, 129, 182. 
Conolly, John, Capt, 27-8, 

30. 
Continental Army, 181-2, 188. 
Cornstalk, 32-42. 
Corn Tassel, 167. 
Cornwallis, 109, no, 117, 124- 

5, 210. 
Creeks, i, 2, 18, 109, 131, 137, 

143, 161, 194, 210. 
Cresap, Michael, 27-31, 39. 
Crows, 234. 
Cruger, 125. 
Cumberland, 17, 18, 21, 23, 43, 

104, 134-144, 166, 177, 187, 

194. 
Cumberland Gap, 18, 22, 24. 

Danville, 171, 175. 
Defiance, Fort, 214, 217, 219. 
Dela wares, 4, 5, 24, 83, 86, 90, 

92. 
Denny, 205. 
De Peyster, 123. 
De Quindre, 54-5- 
Detroit, 49, 54, 59, 72-4, 87, 

91, 94, 95, 100, 102, 190, 208, 

219, 240. 
Dixon, 235. 
Donelson, John, 136. 
Dunmore, Lord, 26-8, 32, 37- 

40, 42, 47, 85, 91, 227. 

Embarras River, 78. 
Estill's Station, 94-5. 
Eton's Station, 139. 

Falls, the. See I/Ouisville. 
Fayette County, 95, 97. 
Ferguson, Patrick, 110-22. 
Field, Colonel, 34. 
Fincastle County, 40. 



Fleming, William, Col., 166, 

171. 
Floyd, John, 23-4. 
Fort Union, 139. 
Foxes, 4. 
Frankland, 157. 
Franklin, Benjamin, 156, 158- 

59- 
Franklin, State of, 152-65. 

Georgia, 22, 109, 115, 182, 194, 

210, 220, 240. 
Gibault, 67, 76. 
Gibson, John, Col., 38, 87-8. 
Girty, Simon, 59. 
Glaize River, 214. 
Gnadenhiitten, 7, 85, 89. 
Gower, Nancy, 137. 
Gray, Captain, 233. 
Grayson, "William, 183. 
Greathouse, 27, 29, 39. 
Great Lakes, 143, 150, 194. 
Great Smoky Mountains, 104, 

III, 127. 
Greene, Nathaniel, 211. 
Greeneville, 211-12, 218-19. 
Greenville, 157, 159. 

Hagerstown, 151. 
Hamilton, Fort, 195. 
Hamilton, Henry, 50, 55, 71- 

5, 8i-3- 
Hamtranck, Major, 191. 
Hancock, 235. 

Hardin, John, Col., 192, 207. 
Harlan, 97-8. 
Harmar, General, 189, 191-5, 

217. 
Harrodsburg, 46, 60, 97, 102, 

146, 166. 
Helm, Leonard, Capt., 73, 82. 
Henderson, 42-8, 102, 139. 
Henry, Patrick, 23, 47, 62. 
Hill, 115-16. 
Hobson's Choice, 211. 
Holston, 43, 63, 108, 112, 126- 

7, 130, 132, 134, 136, 153, 

161. 
Hurons, 50, 95. 



Index 



245 



Ulinois, 61, 63, 84, 135, 140, 

144, 166, 208, 235, 240-1. 
Indiana, 219. 
Iroquois, i, 3, 4, 86, 208. 
Itasca, Lake, 237. 

Jay, John, 241. 
Jefferson, Fort, 196, 204. 
JeflFerson, Thomas, 47, 221- 

8, 235. 
Jonesboro, 132, 153, 158, 163. 

Kanawha, Battle of Great, 33- 

37- 
Kanawha River, 24, 32-3, 35, 

51- 

Kaskaskia, 64-7, 74-6, 83. 

Kenton, Simon, 13, 48, 56-9, 
loi. 

Kentucke Gazette, 176. 

Kentucky, 17-21, 43, 60, 62, 74, 
85, 94-103, 117, 140, 144, 146, 
148, 150, 166-179, 187, 189, 
191, 196, 212-15, 220, 241. 

King's Mountain, 117-18, 127. 

King's Mountain, Battle of, 
118-24. 

Knight, 92. 

Knoxville, 240. 

Lacey, i 15-16. 

Laussat, 222-3. 

Leach Lake, 237, 

Lee, Richard Henry, 183. 

Lewis, Andrew, Gen., 32-7. 

Lewis, Charles, 34. 

Lewis, Meriwether, 227-36, 

241. 
Lexington, 48, 95-7, 146. 
Limestone, 150, 191. 
Lincoln, 97. 
Lincoln, Benjamin, 208. 
Livingston, 221-2. 
Logan, Benjamin, 170, 173. 
Logan, Iroquois chief, 27-8, 

29-31, 38-9, 59- 
Logan's Station, 48, 97, 98, 

lOI. 

Louisiana, 220-5, 235, 237. 



Louisville (the Falls), 24, 64, 
83, 145-6, 166, 219. 

McAfee, 22, 45. 
McColloch, 51-2. 
McConnell's Station, 95, 97. 
McDowell, 112, 114, 119. 
McGarry, 97-8. 
McGillivray, log. 
McKee, 95, 97, 209, 217. 
Mandau, 22S, 230, 232, 234-5. 
Mansker, Kasper, 21-2, 134-5, 

139, 140. 
Marietta, 186, 188, 189. 
Martin, Alexander, Gov., 155. 
Martin, Joseph, Col., 129-31, 

160-3. 
Maryland, 151, 178-9, 182. 
Massachusetts, 179, 182, 
Mauniee, 73, ico, 214. 
Mayflower, llie, 186. 
Mexico, 221, 224, 237. 
Miami Company, i88. 
Miamis, 4, 52, 102, 190-7, 208, 

213, 217. 
Michilimackinac, 219. 
Miller, 214. 
Mingo, 38, 90, 92. 
Mississippi, 143, 150, 168, 177, 

220, 225, 227, 236, 241. 
Missouri, 227, 228, 230, 232, 

234, 235. 
Monmouth, no. 
Monongahela, 26, 51, 85, 102. 
Moravian Indians, 6-7, 85-93. 
Muskingum, 7, 186, 187. 



Napoleon, 222-3. 

Nashville (Nashboro), 21, 139, 

140, 240. 
Natchez, 21, 138, 140. 
Netherland, 99-100. 
New England, 181-2, 185-7. 
New Hampshire, 182. 
New Jersey, 182, 236. 
New Orleans, 102, 174, 222, 

223, 224. 
New York, 178, 182-3. 



>46 



Index 



Niagara, 208. 

Nolichucky, 126, 131, 160, 163. 

Northwest, the, 179, 183-196. 

Oconostota, 43, 

Ohio, 23, 51, 85, 90, 93, 101-3, 
138, 142-50, 177, 181, 191-4, 
205, 208-11, 119, 240, 241. 

Ohio Company, 182-6. 

Old Tassel, 130. 

Ordinance of 1787, the, 183-5. 

Osage, 237. 

Ottawas, 4, 86. 

Pawnee, 233, 238. 
Pennsylvania, 10, 18, 26-30, 

104, 132, 187, 191. 
Philadelphia, 9, 103, 205. 
Pickaway Plaius, 4. 
Pickering, Timothy, 208. 
Pike, Zebulon Montgomery, 

236-41. 
Pinckney, 241. 
Pitt, Fort, 24, 27, 32, 74, 87, 

88. 
Pittsburg, 62, 87, 103, 145, 198, 

211. 
Point Pleasant, 33, 150. 
Pottawattamies, 4, 237. 
Powell's Valley, 23, 24, 44, 

130. 
Putnam, Rufus, Gen., 186-8, 

20S. 

Randolph, Beverly, 208. 

Rawdon, 125. 

Recovery, Fort, 211, 213, 217. 

Redhawk, 45. 

Redstone Settlements, 62, 102. 

Republican River, 237. 

Revolution, the American, 10, 

26, 152, 181, 186. 
Rio Grande, 237-8. 
Robertson, James, 42, 106-7, 

134-41- 
Robinson, Dr., 239. 
Rocheblave, 64, 66, 72. 
Roche du Bout, 214. 

Sacs, 40. 



St. Asaph's Station, 146. 

St. Charles, 228. 

St. Clair, General, 188, 194- 

206, 207, 208, 210, 211, 213. 
St. Louis, 228, 235, 236, 237. 
Salem, 85, 89. 
Salt River, 24. 
Sandusky, 85-6, 87, 88, 90, 190, 

218. 
San Ildefonso, 221. 
Santa Fe, 239, 240. 
Sargent, Winthrop, 197. 
Saunders, 103. 
Schonbrunn, 85, 89. 
Scioto, 4, 32. 
Scott, General, 213, 215, 216, 

218. 
Seminoles, i. 
Senecas, 4. 
Sevier, John, 106, 112, 113, 

116, 121, 122, 126-31, 153- 

165. 
Shawnees, 4, 23-4, 27-38, 50, 

86, 91, 95, 173, 214. 
Shelby, Evan, 34, 48, 159. 
Shelby, Isaac, 35, 112, 114, 

115, 119, 121, 123, 126. 
Shoshones, 232. 
Sioux, 235. 

Stone River Station, 139. 
Sukey, 133. 

Sycamore Shoals, 43, 112, 158. 
Symmes, John Cleves, 188. 

Tarleton, iio-ii, 119, 123, 

125. 
Tennessee, 104-6, 127, 136, 

149, 152, 166, 177, 194, 220, 

240, 241. 
Texas, 240. 

Timbers, Fallen, 215, 218, 228. 
Tipton, John, 154, 157, 158, 

160, 163. 
Todd, John, 48, 97-100. 
Todd, Levi, 96-7. 
Transylvania, 46, 47, 139. 
Trigg, 97-100. 
Trueman, Alexander, 207. 
Tryon, 105. 



Inde: 



247 



Unaka, 104. 

Union, 171, 173, 175, 176, 178, 
179. 

Van Cleve, Benjamin, 20004. 
Vigo, Francis, 75. 
Vincennes, 61, 67, 73-5, 80-3, 

190-1. 
Virginia, 10, 24, 26, 47, 62, 83, 

90, 104, 106-7, 112, 115, 127, 

130-1, 135, 152-3, 159. 169- 

76, 177-9, 189. 

Wabash, 4, 72-6, 144, 173, 

177, 190-7, 208. 
Washington, county of, 155. 
Washington, Fort, 191-6, 204, 

211, 212. 
Washington, George, 23, 106, 

no, 196, 205-6, 208. 
Watauga, 19, 104-8, 112, 126, 

134. 139, 152. 
Wayne, Anthony, 208-19, 

228, 241. 



Wayne, Fort, 218, 219. 
Weas, 4, 73. 
Western Reserve, 179. 
Wheeling, 51-2, 62, 93, 95, 

205. 
Wilderness Road, 43, 144, 146. 
Wilkinson, James, 171, 173, 

174. 
Williams, 123, 
Williams, Fort, 151. 
Williamson, David, 87-92. 
IVillitig, the, 75, 82. 
Winnebagos, 3. 
Winston, Major, 119, 
Wisconsin, 240. 
Wyandots, 3, 18, 50, 86, 90-1, 

94, 217, 218. 
Wyllys, Major, 192-3. 

Yadkin, 18, 19, 23. 
Yellow Creek, 29. 
Yellowstone, 231, 234, 235. 
Yoder, Jacob, 102. 

Zinzendorf, Count, 6, 



Knickerbocker Literature Series 

Prepared as Supplementary Reading for the 
Use of Higher=Qrade Classes 

Edited by FRANK LINCOLN OLMSTED 

I. Episodes from " The Winning of the West '* 

By Theodore Roosevelt 

This series has been prepared to present in convenient form for 
the student, and for the use of literature classes, the substance of 
the works of certain noteworthy authors. Volumes will be pre- 
pared based upon the complete texts of certain American classics, 
and so edited as to leave unimpaired the essential portions of the 
narrative, while preserving enough of incident and of detail to com- 
plete the pictures of the periods and places selected. The main 
text will be left in the language of the original authors. 

The first group in the series will comprise four volumes devoted 
to the literature illustrating the exploration, the conquest, and the 
development of the territory of the West. The First Volume will 
contain the story of "The Winning of the West," by Theodore 
Roosevelt, and with the chronological narrative will present the 
complete text of certain of the more dramatic and noteworthy inci- 
dents in this very picturesque chronicle. The Second Volume will 
present in like manner the consecutive narrative and the more note- 
worthy incidents from "Astoria" and "Adventures of Captain 
Bonneville," by Washington Irving, giving a chronicle of the ex- 
plorations of the fur traders in the outposts from which their work 
was done. The Third Volume, based upon Cooper's " Last of the 
Mohicans," will present a romantic picture of the Indians and 
hunters of the border. The Fourth Volume, based upon the " Life 
of Lincoln," by Noah Brooks, although dealing with a much later 
period of time, tells of experiences of a boyhood and young man- 
hood passed in these same pioneer surroundings. 

Further volumes under consideration are : For the Colonial 
Period, Franklin's Autobiography ; for the Period of the Revo- 
lution, Cooper's " The Spy " ; for the War of 1812, Roosevelt's 
"Naval War of 1812 " ; for the Civil War, Church's "Life of 
Grant " and White's " Life of Lee." 

Each volume contains illustrations and maps. 
Per volume ... 75 cts. to $1.00 net 



Q. P. PUTNAM'S SONS, New York and London 



AMERICAN HISTORY. 



, THE SPHERE OF THE STATE ; OR, THE 
PEOPLE AS A BODY POLITIC. 

With Special Consideration of Certain Present Problems. By 
Frank Sargent Hoffman, A.M., Professor of Philosophy, 
Union College. 12° . . . . . . $1 50 

THE WINNING OF THE WEST. 

By Theodore Roosevelt. Author of "The Naval War of 
1812," " Hunting Trips of a Ranchman," " The Wilder- 
ness Hunter," etc. With maps. 4 vols., octavo, gilt top, 
each $:^ 50 

Vol. I. From the Alleghanies to the Mississippi, 1769-1776. 

Vol. II. From the Alleghanies to the Mississippi, 1 777-1 783. 

Vol. III. The Founding of the Trans- Alleghany Common- 
wealths, I 784-1 790. 

Vol. IV. Louisiana and the Northwest, 1791-1809. 

THE STORY OF THE CIVIL WAR. 

A Concise Account of the War in the United States of Amer. 
ica between 1861 and 1865. By John Codman Ropes, 
Member of the Mass. Historical Society, The Military 
Historical Society of Massachusetts, Fellow of the Royal 
Historical Society. Author of " The First Napoleon," 
" The Campaign of Waterloo," etc. To be complete in 
four parts, printed in four octavo volumes, with compre- 
hensive maps and battle plans. Each part will be com- 
plete in itself and will be sold separately. 

Part I. Narrative of Events to the opening of the Campaign 
of 1862. With 5 maps. 8° . . . . f i 50 

Part II. — The Campaigns of 1862. With 13 maps. 
8° $2 50 

THE CONSTITUTIONAL HISTORY AND 

POLITICAL DEVELOPMENT OF 

THE UNITED STATES. 

An Analytical Study. By Simon Sterne (of the New York 
Bar.) Fourth edition, revised, with additions. 12°, $1 25 

THE TARIFF HISTORY OF THE UNITED 
STATES, 1789-1888. 

By Prof. F. W. Taussig. Comprising the material contained 
in " Protection to Young Industries " and " History of the 
Present Tariff," together with the revisions and additions 
needed to complete the narrative down to 1897. Fourth 
Edition, revised. 12° . . . .$12$ 

G. P. PUTNAM'S SONS 
NSW YORK LONDON 



AMERICAN HISTORY. 



THE LITERARY HISTORY OF THE AMERI- 
CAN REVOLUTION: 1763-1783. 

By Moses Coit Tyler, Professor of American History in Cor- 
nell University, and author of " A History of American 
Literature during the Colonial Times," etc. Two vol- 
umes, sold separately. Large 8°. Each . . $3 00 
Vol. I. — 1763-1776; Vol. II. — 1776-17S3. 

" Professor Tyler's newest work is rich, stimulating, informing, and 
delightful. And it is not only fascinating itself, but it is a luminous guide 
into the whole abundant, varied, and alluring field of our revolutionary 
literature : poetry, belles-lettres, biography, history, travel, and crackling 
controversy." — Georgk W. Cable, in Current Literature, 

" A work certain to be welcomed by students of history throughout 
the world." — New York Sun. 

A HISTORY OF AMERICAN LITERATURE 
DURING THE COLONIAL TIME. 

By Moses Coit Tyler, Professor of American History, Cornell 
University. New edition revised, in two volumes. Vol- 
ume I. — 1607-1676. Volume II. — 1676-1765. 

Each $2 50 

Agawam edition, 2 vols, in one. 8°, half leather. 3 00 
" It must be a satisfaction to you to know that your work on the Co- 
lonial Period has been so well done that it will never need to be done over 
again." — Longfellow to the Author. 

COMPARATIVE ADMINISTRATIVE LAW. 

An Analysis of the Administrative Systems National and 
Local, of the United States, England, France, and Ger- 
many. By F. J. Goodnow, Professor of Administrative 
Law in Columbia College. Part I. — Organization. Part 
II. — Legal Relations. 2 vols. 8°, cloth, each . $2 50 

" We regard these two volumes as the most important contribution to 
political science . . . which has been published in this country, we 
will not undertake to say for how long." — The Independent. 

" A work of great learning and profound research . . . remarka- 
ble alike for analytical power and lucidity of method . . . unique and 
of permanent excellence." — New York Tribune. 

" A wealth of research and illustration of which Germany herself 
might be proud, though the manner is all too clear and practical for Ger- 
many." — London Observer. 

G. P. PUTNAM'S SONS 

NEW YORK LONDON 



WORKS BY THEODORE ROOSEVELT. 



The Winning of the West. 

Four volumes. Each volume is complete in itself and is sold 
separately. 8°, cloth, with maps. Each . . $2 50 

" A story full of interesting incidents, which never grows dull from the 
first page to the last ; written after much research, and with impartial 
soberness ; an admirable contribution to the history of America." — 
London Spectator, 

Hunting Trips of a Ranchman. 

Sketches of Sport on the Northern Cattle Plains. With 27 
full-page wood engravings and 8 smaller engravings, from 
designs by A. B. Frost, R. Swain Gifford, J. C. Beard, 
Fannie E. Gifford, and Henry Sandham. Bevelled boards, 
8° $3 00 

" One of those distinctively American books which ought to be always 
welcomed as contributing distinctly to raise the literary prestige of the 
country all over the world." — Neiv York Tribune, 

The Wilderness Hunter. 

With an account of the Big Game of the United States, and its 
chase with Horse, Hound, and Rifle. With illustrations 
by Remington, Frost, Sandham, Eaton, Beard, and 
others. 8" . . . . . . . . $3 50 

" Written by a mighty hunter, also a naturalist as well as a sportsman, 
a close observer as well as a sure shot ; not John Burroughs himself could 
write more interestingly of the sights and sounds of the wilderness." — 
Philadelphia Telegraph, 

The Naval War of 1812. 

Or, The History of the United States Navy during the last 
war with Great Britain. To which is appended an ac- 
count of the Battle of New Orleans. 4th edition, 8°, 
cloth $2 50 

" The volume is an excellent one in every respect, and shows in so 
young an author the best promise for a good historian — fearlessness of 
statement, caution, endeavor to be impartial, and a brisk and interesting 
way of telling events." — A'^, Y. Times. 



G. P. PUTNAM'S SONS, New York and London, 



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